Public Bill Committee

[Mr. Christopher Chope in the Chair]

Clause 46

Work experience for persons over compulsory school age

Question (this day) again proposed, That the clause, as amended, stand part of the Bill.

Nick Gibb: As I was saying before lunch, clause 46 is a classic example of the top-down prescription so loathed by those who value their professional autonomy. The clause requires local authorities to encourage the participation in work experience of those still in education between the ages of 18 and 19.
If I understand the clause correctly, it will force sixth formers studying A-levels to take time out from their studies and sporting or voluntary community activities to spend time doing work experience. I should have thought that whether that is beneficial would be a matter for the students teacher and for the student to assess. Although the wording is encourage participation, such a clause will come to be seen by schools as compulsory because they will consider what Ofsteds response would be to compliance with the clause.
Such an experience might be valuable for many 16 to 19-year-old students. However, surely that should be left to the discretion and judgment of professionals, rather than imposed by the diktat of this small group of Ministers. It is a one-size-fits-all approach. Is this what the Government mean by personalised learning? The clause does not seem to be very personalised.

Jim Knight: It is good to be back after a break, Mr. Chope.
The clause will give local authorities the power to secure the provision of work experience for young learners over compulsory school leaving age. The hon. Member for Bognor Regis and Littlehampton should read line 15:
A local education authority in England may secure the provision of work experience.
It does not say must, there is no prescription, they are not forced to do it; they may do it. The clause goes on to say that a local authority in England must encourage participation and encourage employers. Again, there is no prescription.
There is evidence that work experience provides learners with the opportunity to develop the employability skills that employers want. It helps them to get into and remain in employment and to progress in their working lives. Hence, we want local authorities to encourage participation. I was pleased to launch the CBIs 2007 report Time well spent with Richard Lambert. More than two thirds of 14 to 16-year-old respondents agreed or strongly agreed that work experience had helped them to understand how learning at school is important in getting a job and 80 per cent. agreed that it had given them a good insight into the world of work.
Almost all young people participate in work experience in the final two years of compulsory education. The clause will help to ensure that they can continue to do so beyond that stage of their education and obtain further benefits, but it does not require them to do so.

Nick Gibb: Proposed new section 560A(2) says that a local authority must. That is the prescription that I am talking about.

Jim Knight: I encourage the Committee to support the clause because it says simply that local authorities must encourage participation and encourage employers. That is an entirely progressive thing to do.

Question put and agreed to.

Clause 46, as amended, accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Clause 47

Provision of education for persons subject to youth detention

John Hayes: I beg to move amendment 127, in clause 47,page 29, line 32, leave out A local education authority and insert
The Young Peoples Learning Agency.

Christopher Chope: With this it will be convenient to discuss the following: amendment 378, in clause 47, page 29, line 32, leave out education.
Amendment 128, in clause 47, page 30, line 2, leave out a local education authority and insert
the Young Peoples Learning Agency.
Amendment 212, in clause 47, page 30, line 5, after learning, insert or language.
Amendment 129, in clause 47, page 30, line 7, leave out a local education authority and insert
the Young Peoples Learning Agency.
Amendment 130, in clause 47, page 30, line 9, leave out a local education authority and insert
the Young Peoples Learning Agency.
Amendment 131, in clause 47, page 30, line 11, leave out a local education authority in and insert
the Young Peoples Learning Agency.
Amendment 132, in clause 49, page 31, line 11, leave out home authority and insert Young Peoples Learning Agency.
Amendment 232, in clause 49, page 31, line 14, at end insert
(2A) In carrying out the duty imposed by subsection (2) the home authority must have regard to any special educational needs or learning difficulties (within the meaning of section 15ZA(7) and (8)) the persons may have..
Amendment 133, in clause 49, page 31, line 15, leave out subsection (3).
Amendment 379, in clause 49, page 31, line 16, leave out education.
Amendment 134, in clause 49, page 31, line 27, leave out a local authority and insert
the Young Peoples Learning Agency.

John Hayes: It is good to be back after a splendid lunch. I had a glass of champagne. I do not know what you had, Mr. Chope, but I am sure that the Minister is equally fortified and ready for this afternoon.
Having accused the Minister for Schools and Learners of being limacine in respect of the progress towards self-regulation in further education, I fear I will now be rather slow myself. We are about to deal with a large group of amendments on an important clause, and there is much to be said in the interests of improving the legislation and representing the interests of learners and others.
Clause 47 inserts new section 18A into the Education Act 1996. The new section will affect the local education authorities for England and Wales in respect of the relevant use of accommodation in their area. Hosting authorities will be required to secure that
enough suitable education and training is provided to meet the reasonable needs
of children and young people in the youth justice system who are held in those establishments.
Amendments 127 to 129 and 132 to 134 probe the reason for provision through local authorities in new section 18A, questioning why the responsibility cannot be transferred to the Young Peoples Learning Agency. A theme emerged before lunch, before the hon. Member for Yeovil joined us, and I feel that it is necessary to acquaint him with that theme so that he can better do his job here. In essence the theme was about the Opposition challenging the new involvement of local education authorities through this legislation and Government resolutely defending that backwards step.
In a sense, the group of amendments continues that theme. As I have arguedI thought pretty persuasively but clearly I did not persuade Ministers earlierit seems that by involving more agencies in the management and funding of skills and training we are likely to end up with a system that is less cost-effective, more insensitive, less responsive to need, more bureaucratic and more opaque. Once again in this part of the Bill, we see that opacity in a new role for LEAs in dealing with youth detention, which is currently the responsibility of the Learning and Skills Council. We believe that it would cause the least disruption and have maximum effect if those young people who are already disengaged are not put through the upheaval of being passed from and between different local education authorities.
Bear in mind that many of the young people will not have had a happy experience of education earlier in their lives. Often they have been failed by the system the first time round and deserve better. The Young Peoples Learning Agency would be a better place to deal with young offenders serving their sentence outside their own local authority area.

Annette Brooke: I must confess that I had a similar reaction when I first thought about the clause, but does the hon. Gentleman agree that a policy that addresses all the issues of a young offenderhousing and education, for exampleis probably best brought together at local level and in conjunction with the childrens trust? If we parcel it off to the YPLA, I am a little concerned that we will not get the other connections right.

John Hayes: That is a good argument. There is indeed a case for a holistic approach. The difficulties are that some of the matters concerning young people will not be dealt with by local authorities anyway, if there are health issues, for example, associated with those young peoples welfare and circumstances. Clearly there will be issues involving matters of justice, and they might face other challenges that are outside the competence of local authorities. It is clear that the local authorities will have to interface with a wide variety of agencies in the same way that the Young Peoples Learning Agency would if our amendment were passed.
The real problem is that people may be moving between institutions. Indeed, they may be well outside their own local authority area. There is no guarantee that they will be in custody in the place where their family is based, where they have a history and where information about them is easily accessed. It would be better for the sake of clarity and lack of complexity and possible bureaucracy to channel the work through one agency rather than a multiplicity of local authorities.
While we welcome a statutory responsibility for the education of those in detentionone of the points made by the hon. Ladythere is a big gap in how we deal with the education and training of people who are detained in that way, particularly so for young people. Indeed, much of the evidence from independent reports as well as from the Governments own analysis suggests that there is a long way to go to get the education and training of offenders right. We therefore welcome a new focus on the subject.
It seems that the provisions under proposed subsections (1)(a) and (1)(b) are likely to lead to some confusion and to a lack of a joined-up approach to the provision to which the hon. Member for Mid-Dorset and North Poole referred and which Opposition Members want. We feel in particular that proposed subsection (1)(b)(ii) and proposed subsection (4) might cause problems due to the transitory nature of the detention of many of the young people concerned. In essence, a young person might be the responsibility of one LEA at home, but another in youth detention.
With a movement between LEAs, those in detention could find themselves passed from pillar to post and subject to the arguments of different funding authorities. The impact of that would be felt most negatively in respect of the progression of the young people. Let me support that argument by referring to what happens in much prison education at the moment. The Minister might want to comment on what is a significant problem that is founded on the lack of consistency of provision for those in custody. People often start one course with one tutor, but are then moved to a different institution and, unable to complete the course, the relationship formed between teacher and learner is broken. There is a lack of follow-through of what people have started so they have to begin all over again. Thus there is a real lack of consistency in how we make opportunities available to those in custody, yet we know that recidivism is linked closely to a lack of skills and education. In a sense, the Bill is part of a bigger issue: how we train and educate those in custody and our mission, which the Government probably share, of improving that provision, particularly in respect of greater consistency.
The movement to LEAs should in the eyes of the Government create the greater focus that we seek, but that can work only if LEAs are ready and quick to do the job and there are doubts about that. It is an important new responsibility for local education authorities and we want firm assurances that they are indeed tooled up in resources and skills. Thus far, not much evidence has been brought to that effect. As the Special Educational Consortium argues, the drafting of the clauses leaves some questions unanswered regarding the provision for people with special educational needs who are detained, the prevalence of which is sadly significant.
Reports from the Youth Justice Board found that about 150,000 children and young people under the age of 18 enter the youth justice system each year, of which about 70,000 are of compulsory school age. It has been found that 33 per cent. need help with reading and writing and 15 per cent. have SEN statements compared with about 3 per cent. of the general population. Some 83 per cent. of boys in custody have been excluded from school and 41 per cent. of boys and girls in custody were aged 14 or younger when they were last in school.
Those young people face multifaceted problems and need to be provided with opportunities through a more consistent, more coherent package of measures to deal with both their core skills and their aspirations to achieve more. I think that Members across the Committee will understand that unless we do that, we are likely to exacerbate a cycle of disengagement. It is vital to get the Bill right.
The interim report of the Bercow review of services for those with speech, language and communication needs indicates that at least 60 per cent. of the 11,000 people passing through young offender institutions each year have difficulties with speech, language and communication. A recent Department of Health report highlighted that a quarter of children in contact with youth justice have learning disabilities. Offenders fall into three main categories: those with learning disabilities, the wider group with learning difficulties, and the largest group with some kind of borderline problem. There are few young people in those circumstances who do not require an entirely fresh approach to education and training. As I said earlier, they have often failed the first time around.
There are three other worries, however, about the clauses, which have been highlighted by the Prisoners Education Trust and the Standing Committee for Youth Justice. First, among all the other funding priorities that LEAs have, how will the provision for those in detention centres be ensured? How will we build on the support for those young people? What priority are LEAs likely to give them? I was a member of a local authority. You, Mr. Chope, served in a distinguished fashion in such a capacity and other members of the Committee may have done so too. How will a local authority respond to demands on its resources from that quarter, when many of the young people concerned will not necessarily be from its localitymerely residing there temporarilyand when there are other demands on resources from schools and other places that are strongly supported by the local community? We are handing local education authorities a poisoned chalice, and it would be much better for an agency that did not face those pressures to have responsibility for this important area. These young people need second chances to put things right, not inadequate provision and closed doors.
Secondly, have the Government considered whether some LEAs will be disproportionately burdened by youth detention centres in their area? Clearly, those that have many young people in custody in their locality will bear a much greater responsibilityin quantitative termsthan those that do not. How will the Government deal with that, in terms of funding, resources, support and so on, and how dynamic is that support likely to be? These are rapidly changing circumstances. Fortunately, many people who pass through youth custody are there relatively briefly. I guess that is the nature of youth custody. How responsive will the system be to change? Will the funding follow the learner or will it have to come from the same budget as funding for all other provision? Will the funding be ring-fenced? If so, how, and how will that work in the context of local authority finance, which is difficult to understand? I remember that when I was a member of Nottinghamshire county council I proposed or seconded amendments to the budget. For a fleeting period I understood local government finance but then the moment passed and I forgot about it. My current understanding of it is about as great as that of most Members of Parliament and most members of local authorities, but the Minister will have a clearer, more comprehensive and more incisive view about those things and we look forward to benefiting from her knowledge and insight.
Thirdly, what provision will there be for information sharing and joint curriculum development, not just across local authorities butfurther to the intervention from the hon. Member for Mid-Dorset and North Pooleacross a variety of agencies? As I said, although some of the responsibilities of local government are such that they would be able to provide a semi-holistic serviceit would be honed in some regardthere is no guarantee that local authorities would be good at accessing information from other agencies or relevant sources, or indeed passing that information on. It is not just about gathering information; it is about how that information is stored, handled and how it would be passed on as a legacy of knowledge to the people who might be dealing with that young person as they move through the system. What use is it to the young person concerned if they move from one LEA to another and that second authority has little or no information about them and so attempts to approach them in a different way, offering them a different educational diet unaware of their progression? That is not fanciful, given what I said earlier about the record on education, skills and training of offenders generally, which is at bestat my most generouspatchy. That was raised, as the Minister will know, by the Standing Committee on Youth Justice as a distinct worry and should be addressed to minimise the disruption to those learners who have often already suffered so much disruption in their lives.
Clause 92 makes provision for the CEO of the SFA to secure education for those youth offender institutions accommodating 18 to 20-year-olds, raising the question as to why 16 to 18-year-olds cannot be dealt with on a national basis, which may eliminate the vagaries of geographical caprice in their treatment.
Amendment 99 is reasonably self-explanatory in that it aims to ensure that learners in youth detention receive a minimum of 30 hours per week of education or training. This ensures that learners have a maximum chance while in detention to engage in education and successfully as a result gain skills which enable them to re-engage in employment and

Sarah McCarthy-Fry: Has the hon. Gentleman inadvertently strayed into the next set of amendments? Amendment 99 is in the next set.

John Hayes: That was a mere aside. In terms of this peroration that was barely a word. I really only meant helpfully to set the matter in context for the benefit of the Minister before she gives what I think will be a scintillating response to these few brief words. [Interruption.] The Minister for Schools and Learners is intervening from a sedentary position but I will not be goaded by him, despite the fact that I described him as being sluggish earlier. He has clearly tried to disprove that by the energy of his sedentary intervention.
Amendment 212 aims to ensure that LEAs take account of learning and language difficulties. I mentioned the Bercow review earlier and the profound issues around the language skills of many of the young people we are speaking of in this part of the Bill. Those in detention who may not be able to speak English as a first language or who suffer speech impairment may be significantly disadvantaged by this clause. This amendment should be used to establish guidance on this matter. Barnardos is most concerned about this and seeks the reassurances that I articulate in these comments and through this amendment. It is particularly concerned that the duty on LEAs to ensure education for the group of children with language difficulties includes a clear requirement to meet the needs of children with statements and those whose first language is not English. It is also anxious that if children are detained outside their home local education authority that the home LEA must co-operate with the LEA where they are placed to ensure that suitable educational support is provided immediately on release.
Amendments 378 and 379 are probing amendments, once again stimulated by the Standing Committee for Youth Justice, to clarify how guidance under these clauses will be applicable to both the host and home local authorities, to childrens services and youth offending teams as well as to education services. We also seek assurances that the guidance will specifically address the issue of information sharing, sentence planning and curriculum content in the way that I mentioned earlier.
These amendments will allow the Minister to confirm that guidance will be applicable not only to LEAs, but to those other agencies in order to ensure effective joint working between the various arms of the local authority in this matter. This is necessary, given that new subsection 18A requires host local authorities to have regard to any guidance issued by the Secretary of State and new section 562C, inserted by clause 49, does the same for the home authority. This guidance should address a number of issues. This is an important matter and a number of outside bodies, agencies, representative groups and charities are particularly concerned about this aspect of the Bill. These matters deserve airing.
To ensure that a child is able to fulfil their learning potential it is vital that information about the young persons educational needs and experience is shared between host and home authorities quickly and readily as a child goes into custody and then again to prepare for their release. The speed and readiness of the process is what I am trying to highlight here because, as I said, these can be highly dynamic circumstances where, without that alacrity, there will be failures that impact on the young person concerned. It requires schools and local authorities to have joint working protocols with youth offending teams and the secure estate.
That is particularly important for children with special educational needs, for some of the reasons I gave earlier. That is certainly the view of the SEN consortium which suggests that the host authority should meet the childs recognised special educational needs where applicable and be in accordance with part 3 of their statement of special educational needs. That will be workable only if the information regarding SEN and the statement itself is made available in a timely manner. Will the Minister therefore confirm that the issue of information sharing will be addressed in the guidance and if so, how?
In essence our concerns about these matters are founded on doubts about existing practice. You will know, Mr. Chope, with your comprehensive knowledge and profound interest in these things, that the National Audit Office report in 2004 found that only 6 per cent. of youth offending teams were able to confirm that young people could continue education started in custody after release, mainly because of logistical problems in finding suitable courses, reluctance by some young people to attend and difficulties in persuading schools to accept young people who might have previously been excluded. So how will the guidance associated with the Bill ensure that kind of continuity in what is offered to young people, both in terms of information sharing and in placing them in appropriate training or education once they have been released?
With those few remarks on these important matters, I invite the Minister to address some of the critical questions that we have raised. We have discussed these matters at length with some of the bodies that had the greatest expertise in dealing with young people and the bodies that also have considerable doubts about the effectiveness of some aspects of the Bill. We do not for a moment believe that the Government are not as concerned as we are about these things, but we have real doubts about whether all the measures have been thought through as fully as they might have been.

Annette Brooke: I will be brief. This is an important clause as it deals with yet another area that has been long neglected. Although I might not agree with all the comments made by the hon. Member for South Holland and The Deepings, I agreed with a great deal of what he said. This is an occasion where we must get it right.
I have given a lot of thought to the balance between the local authority where the institution is located, and the home authority where the young offender has some residence. I think that the measures in the Bill are right, but it will be incredibly difficult to implement them well and we must be aware of that. It has not always been easy for youth offending teams to keep track of everybody in institutions when they have a lot of people on their books and are spread out all over the place. In Dorset, for example, young people can find themselves miles away from home, which makes it difficult for the youth offending team. That means that there is a burden of resources on both the home and local authorities, and both must be resourced adequately to make the provision work. There must be staff in the home authority with the specific duty to liaise and ensure that it works.
I am entirely in sympathy with amendment 232. As the hon. Gentleman pointed out, one of the big issues is that for various reasons young people may have missed out on basic educational skills. The one true way to rehabilitation and an end to reoffending is to break that cycle. Addressing special educational needs is really important. In instances of speech and language difficulties, addressing those needs could mean that there is the chance to overcome those disabilities. That is an unusual situation, but it could happen. Come what may, we know that educational retainment will be low and there is a huge challenge to be tackled at that level. It is important not to get into a downward spiral regarding children and young people who, for whatever reason, have not managed to get a basic level of education up to this point.
There are many opportunities. Many of us will have heard about the apprenticeships that Transco has provided in various youth institutions. Those have set up young people and enabled them to move into a job. If the approach in the Bill can provide opportunities for apprenticeships, it will make a big contribution to the future. I support the approach, although there are a lot of ends that need tying up and we need reassurances. We also need monitoring because the danger is that a young person could fall between different authorities.

Sarah McCarthy-Fry: First, I shall speak to amendments 127 to 131. We have heard from the hon. Member for South Holland and The Deepings that their intention is to place a duty on the Young Peoples Learning Agency to secure the provision of education and training in juvenile custody, rather than see the duty placed on local education authorities, as in the Bill.
I recognise the concerns that, as drafted, the duties will mean that LEAs that have juvenile custodial establishments in their area will need to secure provision for young people from different local authority areas who are detained in their establishments. I also sympathise with the concern that we need to ensure consistency in the approach to education and training provision across the juvenile secure estate. However, clause 47 is at the heart of our reforms to improve education and training for young people in juvenile custody and to ensure that education and training arrangements for that group are aligned as closely as possible with those in the mainstream sector.
We intend the duties on the home and host local authorities to promote continuity and consistency in provision. That would certainly not happen by giving the duties to the YPLA because provision should mirror the mainstream as much as possible. We expect local authorities, as the strategic commissioners of childrens services in the mainstream sector, to be in the best position to secure education and training to meet young peoples reasonable needs while they are in juvenile custody. Our proposals to make LEAs responsible for education and training in juvenile custody will establish clear accountability for children and young peoples learning, aligned with the mainstream sector, for children and young peoples learning.
The hon. Members for South Holland and The Deepings and for Mid-Dorset and North Poole expressed concerns about a local authoritys capacity to deliver. We will be working on a national delivery framework, which will be developed in partnership with central and local government, the Youth Justice Agency, the National Offender Management Service and the Prison Service. We will consult to ensure that there is a delivery framework and will issue statutory guidance. The YPLA will play a vital role in supporting LEAs, and the React programme, established in the LGA with the support of the Association of Directors of Childrens Services, is working to prepare local authorities for their new responsibilities.
A concern was also expressed that some host local authorities may be disproportionately burdened because they have a young offenders institution in their area. However, they will receive specific funding and resources for this purpose via the YPLA. There were also concerns about information sharing but, if I may, I will defer my remarks on that until we get to the proposals on information provided by the home LEA, particularly, on SEN. They are in new clause 17, which we have not got to yet.

John Hayes: Local authority funding seems to be critical. The Under-Secretary has reassured the Committee that the affected local authorities will receive extra funding. Will it be ring-fenced? How will it operate year by year? Clearly there are long-term planning issues associated with this work, so will the funding be annual or over an extended period? I also raised a point about dynamism. Circumstances will change radically according to the number of young people that the local authority is responsible for and their particular needs, such as learning difficulties.

Sarah McCarthy-Fry: We intend the YPLA to play a pivotal role in ensuring equitable distribution of funding. The arrangements for exactly how that will be managed will be developed with the YPLA.
I expect that another argument for not using the YPLA is that, as hon. Members are aware, it will cover England only and its jurisdiction is not planned to be extended to Wales. We have worked closely with the Welsh Assembly Government to consider the best approach for people in juvenile custody, and we propose that a consistent approach across England and Wales, where LEAs take on the function, is the best way forward. However, in England, the YPLA will have an important role in ensuring consistency of approach for education and training provision across the country. The Welsh Ministers will fulfil that function in Wales and will work with relevant partners to agree and set parameters for education and training in juvenile custody.
For those reasons, I propose that clause 47, as drafted, provides the best way to ensure that we align education and training in juvenile custody with the mainstream sector and to ensure that the needs of those children and young people are met. I thank the hon. Member for Mid-Dorset and North Poole for concurring with the view that this is the best approach.
Amendments 132, 133 and 134 relate to clause 49, which places a duty on the child or young persons home LEA to promote the fulfilment of that persons learning potential while they are in custody and on their release. We intend for that duty to play an important role in fostering a consistent education experience for children and young people in juvenile custody. For the first time, one authority will need to maintain involvement in the young persons education, regardless of where that person is in the system. That will also help to ensure that young peoples education and training needs are picked up on their release from juvenile custody.

Annette Brooke: I am concerned that the home authority will need additional funding to cope with the responsibilities of tracking and making sure that the young person is receiving the education. Can the Minister say something about the resources for the home authority?

Sarah McCarthy-Fry: I am sure that that is something that will be developed in our framework, particularly with the YPLA having the overarching responsibility to ensure that there is equitable funding across the system from the home LEA and the host LEA.
Many young people are held in custodial establishments located in LEA areas that are different from where they live, so the individually owed duty is an important mechanism for ensuring that a young person receives a consistent experience.
I sympathise with hon. Members intention to place that duty on the YPLA. That would be particularly applicable if the YPLA were also to be responsible for securing education and training, as proposed in hon. Members previous amendments. However, the YPLA, as a national agency, would not be in a position to consider the individual needs of every young person in juvenile custody and would not be the appropriate authority to be able to, for example, transfer information about the young persons prior learning needs, or to take such steps as securing appropriate educational training places for the young person on their release from juvenile custody.
We believe that placing that individually-owed duty on children and young peoples home LEAs will be a huge step forward in terms of fostering consistency of provision for that group and in encouraging information exchange about young peoples personal educational needs.

John Hayes: I am anxious, as other Committee members might be, about who will be the owner of the information to which the hon. Lady refers. This is a complex matter. We are talking about gathering information from a variety of sources, ensuring that that information is accurate and then passing it on to a variety of others in order to ensure not only the coherence, but also the continuity, that we seek. Are LEAs equipped to do that? What database will they use? Can the Minister say something about the protocols involved? This is very challenging and I am not yet convinced that LEAs are equipped, or as I put it earlier, tooled-up, to do the job.

Sarah McCarthy-Fry: Maybe I have more faith in the ability of local government than the hon. Gentleman. There is a huge will among local authorities, particularly with their new responsibilities for the childrens trusts boards, to make sure that those things happen. As I said, we will be strengthening provisions as we get on to our two next sets of amendments, which will give local authorities the power to enable that information-sharing to happen.
I understand that the intention of amendment 212 is that the duty to secure suitable provision for persons in juvenile custody should specifically require LEAs to have regard to children, or young persons, with language difficulties when securing suitable provision. However, that amendment assumes that a persons language needs are not already included in the definition of special educational needs or learning difficulties. As hon. Members might be aware, the definitions of special educational needs and learning difficulties are set out in section 312 of the Education Act 1996, and in section 15ZA of that Act, as inserted by the Bill. Clause 47 should be read alongside that.
Section 312 provides that the child has special educational needs if he has a learning difficulty that calls for special education provision to be made. It is therefore implicit in the 1996 Act that language needs are encompassed in the definition of special educational needs. We consider that clause 47 already provides that host LEAs will need to have regard to young peoples language needs.

John Hayes: I apologise for interrupting the Minister again, but these are really important matters. I did not really follow the Ministers last remark. I was the shadow schools Minister when my hon. Friend the Member for Bognor Regis and Littlehampton regarded that post merely as a distant ambition, among his many objectives, and I remember serving on a Bill Committee that I suspect was one of those to which the Minister referred in relation to SEN. One of our concerns about statements was that they were not necessarily holistic or comprehensive in taking into account the subtle needs of children. The young people concerned might be statemented for emotional and behavioural difficulties, for example, but if they have language problems, it is not absolutely certain that those problems would be identified in that EBD statement.

Sarah McCarthy-Fry: Statutory guidance in the SEN code of practice divides SEN into four categories, including communication and interaction, which encompasses speech, language and communication difficulties.

John Hayes: I am grateful for that assurance, which has educated me, if no one else, but what about the quantification of the provision needed to meet those challenges, because the critical things about that guidance are the specificity of the provision to meet statemented needs and how that provision can be quantified? Perhaps the Minister will say something on that.

Sarah McCarthy-Fry: The point I am trying to make is that I do not think that the requirement on local authorities to have regard to SENI might be corrected by a little note if I am wrongrefers specifically or only to statemented young people. I need to clarify one further thing: it is implicit in the 1996 Act that those reasons are other than those relating solely to the fact that a language in which a person is taught is different to that spoken in the persons home, a point to which the hon. Gentleman referred.
During the passage of the Education and Skills Act 2008, we committed to work with the Communication Trust and other relevant organisations to develop training materials for those with responsibility for the education of young people in juvenile custody. We published our response to John Bercows review of speech, language and communication needs last year, which set out a series of initiatives across Government to improve services for children and young people with speech, language and communication needs.
The development of an improved awareness of the importance of speech, language and communication and better support for those with SLCN across universal, targeted and specialist services will also help young people in contact with the youth justice system. Our action plan made a commitment to develop a joint commissioning framework on services for children with SLCN through up to 20 local area pathfinders. We are currently selecting those pathfinders, and it is intended that they will include services for children in contact with the youth justice system, including those in custody.

John Hayes: I wonder whether I might helpfully intervene while the Minister seeks further inspiration. What proportion of young people who are incarcerated or detained at home and who do not have a statement acquire one thereafter? If a young person who is detained has profound difficulties that have not been identified earlier in their school life, it seems critical that we should put in place measures that allow those difficulties to be analysed and dealt with in an appropriate way to move them on and improve their chances. Does that happen, and if not, why not?

Sarah McCarthy-Fry: Obviously, I do not have that information to hand, but I will write to the hon. Gentleman on that point. We will also make clear our expectations for the provision of education and training and for meeting the SEN of young people in custody through statutory guidance to local education authorities. That will be developed in partnership with stakeholders and will be consulted on.
With regard to amendment 232, to which the hon. Members for South Holland and The Deepings and for Mid-Dorset and North Poole both referred, I understand that its intention is to amend the new duty inserted by clause 49, which is to promote the fulfilment of a persons learning potential while they are in custody and on their release, so that it specifically requires the home authority to have regard to any SEN or learning difficulties the person might have. However, our view is that in taking steps to promote a persons learning potential the home authority will already need to take account of any SEN or learning difficulties that person might have. We will also issue statutory guidance to local authorities, which home local authorities must have regard to when exercising their duty to promote the fulfilment of the persons learning potential while they are in juvenile custody and upon their release. That will set out our expectations that, in doing so, the home local authority should take steps to help to ensure that a persons special educational needs and learning difficulties are met.

Nick Gibb: I just wanted to take the Minister back to a comment that she made earlier, which clarified an earlier comment that she had made during her remarks that language difficulties were not included in the other clause that she referred to. If the language difficulty arises because English is not the persons mother tongue, and if she is conceding that point, she is not providing a sufficient argument against Barnardos, whose concern led to our drafting amendment 212. Yes, Barnardos is concerned about children with statements, but it is also concerned about children whose first language is not English. If she is now saying that the Bill does not cater for such children, then she has not provided this Committee with an argument against amendment 212.

Sarah McCarthy-Fry: The Bill is in line with any other Bill about the responsibility of the local authority, whether or not people are in the secure establishment. Currently, there is nowhere in the legislation that requires a local authority to include as a special educational need the fact that the language in which a person is taught is different to that spoken in their home. As we all know, that does not necessarily mean that in other parts of educational establishments those needs are catered for and I envisage that, in our statutory guidance, we would include guidance about that too.
I thank hon. Members for amendments 378 and 379, which are timely amendments. Before we introduced the Childrens Act 2004, which brought together education and childrens social services functions to deliver the Every Child Matters agenda, the term local education authority was widely used. Since then, those working in this sector have used the term local authority to encompass everything that they do for children and young people. Our communications with the sector and stakeholders have reflected that change.
As the Committee will have noticed, the Bill is peppered throughout with the term local education authority. I want to reassure the Committee that that is not a mistake. The Bill has been drafted in this way because the order-making power in section 162 of the Education and Inspections Act 2006 to change the term has not yet been used. I am pleased to put on record that it is our intention, subject to the will of this House and the other House, to lay that order at the end of this parliamentary Session. A copy of the draft order was sent to all members of the Committee recently and it is also available in the House Libraries.
Given this information and my assurances, I trust that hon. Members will withdraw amendments 378 and 379, along with the other amendments that I have referred to.

John Hayes: I remain concerned about these matters. I have no doubt about the good intentions of those involved, which the Minister described as the goodwill associated with these matters. I have absolutely no reservation about the goodwill, either of Ministers or indeed local authorities. I am well aware of the sterling work done by councillors of all political persuasions in local authorities up and down Britain. However, I do not think that bowling local authorities a googly and then saying, They are people of immense goodwill, is quite the way to proceed. This measure is certainly a googly; there is no question about that. It is an immensely deceptive area and it is very easy to get this wrong.

Sarah McCarthy-Fry: Will the hon. Gentleman acknowledge that I certainly did not intend that this measure would go ahead solely on the goodwill of local authorities? Instead, the powers that we have put in and the framework that we are going to deliver will enable local authorities to deliver the measure, with their goodwill as well as the powers that we are giving them.

John Hayes: The Minister, in responding to the amendments that I proposed, suggested that her faith in the goodwill of local authorities was greater than mine. Now, I am arguing that my faith in their goodwill is just as great as hers, but that my doubt about the capacity of local authorities to deliver these provisions is rather greater than hers, not because of any fault on their part but because this is an immensely complex area. As I said, it is deceptive in its complexity, because of the need to draw information from a variety of agencies and the need to pass that information on speedily and effectively.
The Minister offered me few assurances about the systems that are in place and almost nothing about the protocols that I asked for. Just in terms of the data, this matter is immensely complex. A series of independent parties have doubts about the effectiveness of databases in respect of Connexions. That is not an allegation of the Opposition, but an observation based on evidence. It is no wonder that so many third party organisations have expressed concerns about this power. Those organisation have expertise in this field that certainly exceeds mine and may even exceed the Ministers.

Sarah McCarthy-Fry: Will the hon. Gentleman acknowledge that the delivery framework we are developing to bring all people together will develop the very protocols he is talking about? All the parties involved will be consulted.

John Hayes: Again, I have no doubt about the willingness to consult. The Bill is a move from the Stalinist, Soviet Russian view of the world that was embodied in the Learning and Skills Council to Byzantium. As I said this morning, at least a Soviet approach brings a certain predictability and consistency. Byzantium was an altogether different affair and it is made real in these provisions with a multiplicity of local authorities dealing with some of the most challenged young people. As a Parliament and as a civilised society, we have a profound responsibility for those young people. They deserve a better deal, a fairer chance and greater opportunity.
My amendments seek to create a more straightforward system by giving those responsibilities to a single agency. This is not an open and shut case. The hon. Member for Mid-Dorset and North Poole is right that something about local responsiveness is attractive. I mentioned earlier that we are advocates of local government so you, Mr. Chope, and Committee members have experience in that regard. As such, we always want local authorities to play an important role in these matters. However, I am not sure that we should hand them the competence for this matter when there are real doubts about their capacity to deal with it, although there are few doubts about their willingness.
I have amplified many of the questions that have been put by a series of third parties. They are of such significance that I am inclined to divide the Committee on amendment 127 to put them on the record. If passed, these matters would be passed to the YPLA rather than to local authorities. That is not because I do not believe in the good will of local government but because I believe in these young people and their futures and I want the best for them.

Question put, That the amendment be made.

The Committee divided: Ayes 5, Noes 10.

Question accordingly negatived.

Nick Gibb: I beg to move amendment 99, in clause 47, page 29, line 38, at end insert
(1A) In deciding for the purposes of subsection (1) whether education or training is enough to meet persons reasonable needs, a minimum of 30 hours per week of education and skills training must be provided..

Christopher Chope: With this it will be convenient to discuss Government amendments 340 to 342, 348 and 349.

Nick Gibb: Most children should be able to decode words effortlessly by the time they are five or six. Every child, except those with specific neurological problems, should be a fluent reader by the time that they are seven. I make absolutely no apology for labouring those points at every opportunity, because the full scandal of how we have been teaching children to read in the past 40 years has yet to be revealed. Statistics for 2007 show that 48 per cent. of prisoners had a reading age of 11 or less, 65 per cent. had maths skills below those of an 11-year-old and a staggering 82 per cent. had handwriting skills at or below those of an average 11-year-old. Reading those statistics makes one realise the full horror of what happens when children fail to acquire such basic skills at an early age.
A 2003 inspectorate of prisons report revealed that 83 per cent. of boys and 65 per cent. of girls under 18 in custody had been excluded from school. More than 40 per cent. were 14 or younger when they had last attended school. I strongly believe that the fact that so many 11-year-olds still struggle with reading when they start secondary school lies at the root of their disaffection. How do we help those youngsters in youth custody? The answer must lie in education in the basic skills and more that lead to a general education.
Action for Children is a voluntary sector provider of childrens services that shares our concern about the quality of education for young people in custody. Action for Children states:
Within the secure estate, education and training provision is patchy. There is a commitment of 30 hours per week of education and skills provision, but figures suggest that the average amount of time spent on education and training is much lower.
Amendment 99 would therefore insert into clause 47 a provision defining whether education or training is enough to meet a persons reasonable needs by requiring at least 30 hours a week, or six hours a day. Given the importance of education in todays competitive modern world and the poor education suffered by most young people in custody, the amendment is essential.
When I was a member of the Education Select Committee, we conducted an inquiry into prison education. What we saw in our prisons when it came to education was appalling and contrasted heavily with prison education abroad. The churn of prisoners meant that education was given a low priority by prison officers. Education in youth custody is not quite as bad, but a statutory duty to provide 30 hours a week would focus priorities in our system. In an important 2002 report, Reducing Re-offending by Ex-Prisoners, the social exclusion unit concluded that employment reduces the risk of reoffending by between one third and one half, and that prisoners who did not take part in education were three times more likely to be re-convicted than those who did. If we believe that education is vital to help young offenders back on to the straight and narrow, Ministers should support amendment 99.
We agree with the Government amendments grouped with amendment 99, as they seek to ensure that those in youth detention receive the same education provision as those in mainstream schools. Government amendment 340 defines the curriculum to be used as either the national curriculum or a local curriculum and requires learning providers to use information from the students home authority, but I have a question for the Minister on that amendment. Clause 47(2) says:
In deciding...whether education or training is suitable to meet persons reasonable needs, a local education authority must...have regard to
(a) the persons ages, abilities and aptitudes;
(b) any special educational needs.
The amendment adds to that three more requirements. The first is the desirability of enabling persons to complete programmes of study or training that they have begun. My concern here is about the wording. If when deciding whether education or training is suitable to meet the persons reasonable needs, a local education authority must have regard to the desirability of enabling persons to complete programmes of study or training which they have begun, that could be interpreted to mean that if the young person will be unable to complete a particular course or training once they leave custody, it will not be necessary to provide it in custody. I should like some reassurance from the Minister that that will not happen in practice.

Annette Brooke: Some very important points have been made by the hon. Member for Bognor Regis and Littlehampton. It is vital that we get this right. I was thinking outside the box as he was speaking because it strikes me that whether or not they have special educational needs, each young person needs an individual learning plan under these circumstances. Needs will vary from individual to individual. It is difficult to start specifying precisely. I have witnessed voluntary work in Feltham young offenders institution which was very good. The programme gave individual attention and was honing basic writing skills. So each individual young person will have specific needs and there needs to be a tailored programme. I shall confess my ignorance here. I do not know whether prison education is inspected. I think it should be. So I should like to ask the Minister about that. I support all the sentiments behind this, but I feel we should tailor to the individual person and have clear points of progress that can be checked by an independent inspector.

Graham Stuart: I rise to support amendment 99 and its requirement that young people in custody should be entitled to 30 hours per week of education and skills training. The Minister may be horrified by the cost of delivering that. As well as cost issues there may be practical issues of being able to deliver that within youth custody. But as my hon. Friend the Member for Bognor Regis and Littlehampton made clear, the cost to society of allowing young people whose education has so far been a failure to continue to be uneducated and thus unable to engage in normal employment outside, is far greater.
I therefore hope that the Minister will take this issue extremely seriously. I also put to her the proposal that she might look to amend the Bill so that, given the lamentable educational standard of most people who enter youth custody, entering youth custody triggers an SEN assessment. Under the Bill it is not the home authority that will have to deal with the young person when they leave custody, but the authority in which the institution sits. It will have to make the assessment and provide the funding and I fear that without the long-term commitment that the home authority would have, it may interpret the Bill to mean looking at any already established special educational needs of a young person who is in custody. It will certainly have no economic incentive to make such an assessment and thus be obliged to allocate additional resources to help that young person turn their life around. I hope that the Minister will also comment on that proposalthat entering youth custody would trigger a formal assessment of special educational needs.

Sharon Hodgson: I was heartened to read Government amendment 340, and especially proposed new subsection (c):
the desirability of enabling persons to complete programmes of study or training which they have begun.
I know that we are not discussing this here, but I seek guidance as to whether that wording will also appear with regard to apprenticeshipsI hope that it willand if so where. When might we expect to debate that?

Sarah McCarthy-Fry: I will start with amendment 99. The hon. Member for Bognor Regis and Littlehampton says that his intention is to further define in the Bill what is meant by ensuring that suitable education is provided to meet the reasonable needs of children and young people in juvenile custody, by specifically requiring a minimum of 30 hours of education and training per week. I sympathise with the view that we should include specific requirements such as the number of hours that should be delivered per person per week. However, the clause makes it clear that LEAs must, in determining whether provision is suitable, have regard to the persons ages, abilities and aptitudes and any special educational needs or learning difficulties they might have.
We understand from working in close partnership with our colleagues at the Youth Justice Board and from wider stakeholders that it is not always practical, or in fact desirable, for young people to participate in 30 hours of education and training per week. As we can all appreciate, young people in custody often have complex needs, which require a range of interventions and support, and we want to ensure that regimes in custody are able to support those needs. For some, that might mean receiving at least 30 hours of education a week, but others might have wider needs. For example, they might need to participate in drug detoxification and behaviour programmes. We therefore propose to set out our more detailed expectations for what education and training should be delivered for children and young people in custody in guidance, in which we can be clear that provision should be able to be adapted to meet children and young peoples needs. That was, I think, the point made by the hon. Member for Mid-Dorset and North Poole.

John Hayes: The Minister makes a case for a more flexible approach because of the particular needs that the young people might have, but it would be entirely possible in guidance to speak about a normal expectation of 30 hours of education or training per week, excepting for the kind of circumstances she has described. If the guidance were less robust, doubts would take root about just how much education and training young people would receive as a norm.

Sarah McCarthy-Fry: I take on board the hon. Gentlemans points and when we put our statutory guidance together we will consider how it could be worded so that the expectations are as I am sure we all wish them to be. However, it is not necessary to put that requirement in the Bill. Amendment 99 is therefore unnecessary and I urge the hon. Gentleman to withdraw it.

Nick Gibb: Another argument in favour of the amendment is that it does not say that a young person has to complete 30 hours of education. The clause is about a local education authority securing that enough suitable education is provided to meet the reasonable needs, which is defined by the amendment as being able to receive 30 hours of education a week. The young person does not need to attend the education but the LEA needs to ensure that it is provided. It is important that it is because otherwise the LEA will find a whole host of excuses not to provide 30 hours of education in custody.

Sarah McCarthy-Fry: I take on board the hon. Gentlemans point but it would be too prescriptive to put that requirement in the Bill. I prefer to put it in guidance so that we can emphasise the point about meeting the needs of the individual learner.
Amendments 340, 341 and 342 would strengthen the clause, while amendments 348 and 349 are technical and consequential. I welcome the support from Conservative and Liberal Democrat Members for the amendments. Given that support and in the interests of time, I do not intend to dwell on their detail. However, I want to put on the record that the assumption is that it is desirable and that guidance will say that young people will be able to continue in education or training obviously subject to the constraints of a custodial setting.

Graham Stuart: Does the Minister consider that people entering youth custody should trigger an SEN assessment?

Sarah McCarthy-Fry: No young person under the proposals will gain a statement while they are in custody because part 4 of the Education Act 1996, which deals with SEN, is suspended while they are in custody. There is a specific reason for that. The statementing process takes a considerable time and most young people are in custodial settings for relatively short periods. We are proposing to suspend the statementing process while people are in custody with a requirement on the home LEAs to pick it up when they return. However, we have not reached that clause yet.

Nick Gibb: I am disappointed in the Ministers response, despite her encouraging opening comment that she was sympathetic with our view. I visited several youth custody settings and prisons while I was a member of the Education Committee, when every excuse from churn to the fact that the prison sentences were not long enough was given by prison officers as a reason why education was not provided. I am talking about prisons, not youth custody settings, but in the prisons that I toured back in 2004, the average amount of education given was half a day a week compared with full-time education in most prisons that we visited abroad.
Unless we specify 30 hours a week under the Bill, I am worried that that level of education will not be provided. It might be provided for 20 or 15 hours, but it will be nowhere near to six hours a day, which is essential if we believe that the road to redemption for prisoners is to ensure that they have a full education to equip them to cope in the modern world. Even programming the Sky+ box often requires a sophisticated level of education, let alone finding a job and holding it down.

Sarah McCarthy-Fry: I am asking the hon. Gentleman to give way because I am not sure whether I will get an opportunity to explain the difference. In the adult prison estate, there is no requirement for any prisoner to participate in education. We are now talking about the youth offending estate, where the responsibility is currently undertaken by the Ministry of Justice and which we are transferring to local authorities. That will be best delivered through statutory guidance not under the amendment.

Nick Gibb: I understand the Ministers point, but the ethos that seems to prevail in her custody settings in this country differs from other countries. Since so much is laid out in legislation that is of less significance than the issue that we are discussing, the hon. Lady is wrong not to accept the amendment, which would put into the Bill that young people in custody should be able to access up to 30 hours a week of education. Given that we regard education important for young people in custody, I intend to test the Committees view on the amendment.

Question put, That the amendment be made.

The Committee divided: Ayes 6, Noes 9.

Question accordingly negatived.

Amendments made: 340, in clause 47, page 30, line 6, at end insert
(c) the desirability of enabling persons to complete programmes of study or training which they have begun;
(d) any relevant curriculum and the desirability that education received by children subject to youth detention should be comparable with education which they could be expected to receive if they were attending a school or institution implementing a relevant curriculum;
(e) the desirability of the core entitlement and the additional entitlement being satisfied in relation to persons over compulsory school age but under 19 who have elected for them..
Amendment 341, in clause 47, page 30, line 6, at end insert
( ) In subsection (2)(d), relevant curriculum means
(a) in relation to a local education authority in England, the National Curriculum for England established under section 87 of the Education Act 2002 as subsisting for the time being;
(b) in relation to a local education authority in Wales
(i) the National Curriculum for Wales established under section 108 of that Act as subsisting for the time being, or
(ii) any local curriculum formed by the authority under section 116A of the Education Act 2002 (formation of local curricula for pupils in Key Stage 4) or for their area under section 33A of the Learning and Skills Act 2000 (formation of local curricula for students aged 16 to 18).
( ) Sections 17B to 17D apply for the purposes of subsection (2)(e) as they apply for the purposes of section 17A..
Amendment 342, in clause 47, page 30, line 6, at end insert
( ) Any arrangements made by a local education authority under subsection (1) for the provision by another person (the learning provider) of education or training must require the learning provider, in making any determination as to the education or training to be provided for a particular person, to have regard to any information provided under section 562E by the persons home authority (within the meaning of Chapter 5A of Part 10) for the purpose of assisting any such determination..
Amendment 270, in clause 47, page 30, leave out lines 18 to 21.(Sarah McCarthy-Fry.)

Clause 47, as amended, ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Clause 48

Persons detained in youth accommodation: application of provisions

Amendment made: 271, in clause 48, page 30, line 33, leave out section and insert Act.(Sarah McCarthy-Fry.)

Sarah McCarthy-Fry: I beg to move amendment 343, in clause 48, page 30, line 45, at end insert
( ) After that subsection add
(3) A child or young person who is being kept in accommodation provided for the purpose of restricting liberty is not to be regarded for the purposes of this section as detained in pursuance of an order made by a court by reason of the fact that a court has authorised the person to be kept in such accommodation under section 25(4) of the Children Act 1989 (use of accommodation for restricting liberty)..
The amendment clarifies legislation that relates to looked-after children who are provided with secure accommodation for welfare reasons. Such children are the subjects of orders under section 25 of the Children Act 1989, which authorise the local authority to restrict their liberty because they would otherwise be at risk of suffering significant harm or present a risk to others. The clause will amend section 562 of the Education Act 1996 so that children and young people subject to detention in juvenile custody are no longer excluded from the provisions of that Act and subsequent Acts read as one with it.
The amendment will simply amend the clause to clarify that section 562 of the 1996 Act does not apply to looked-after children who are placed in secure accommodation under section 25 of the 1989 Act and that local authority duties to those children are the same as to other children, including other looked-after children, in their area. The amendment will remove any doubt about the application of the legislation.

Amendment 343 agreed to.

Clause 48, as amended, ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Clause 49

Persons detained in youth accommodation: further provisions

Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.

Christopher Chope: With this it will be convenient to discuss the following: Government amendments 351 and 352.
Government new clause 17Persons detained in youth accommodation: further provision.
Government new clause 19Release from detention of child or young person with special educational needs.

John Hayes: I am delighted to be called to speak on this clause, Mr. Chope. No doubt the Minister will want to draw on her expansive notes to explain the purpose of the amendments and new clauses.
I want to draw new clause 17 in particular to the attention of the Committee. It will insert new chapter 5A, entitled Persons detained in youth accommodation, into the Education Act 1996. The new clause goes a considerable way towards addressing some matters that we raised earlier today, as the Minister is acknowledging. It answers some of the questions that I raised on clause 47 and is therefore welcome. However, I have a number of particular questions that I hope she will address.
Proposed new section 562B(3)(b) is of particular concern to the Standing Committee for Youth Justice, which highlighted the short period in which young people are kept in detention and the necessity of planning their reintegration on the first day of release. Will the Minister give guidance as to how that is likely to be ensured, given the wording that she is proposing is,
where it appears to the home authority appropriate for them to do so, making arrangements for provision, on the persons release from detention(a) of education?
That is an extraordinarily vague proposal when what is needed is clear guidance. Where it appears for the home authority to act appropriately does not assure me that the preparation for the release of the young person and a reintroduction into society is going to be dealt with the rigour and certainty that we would expect.
The second question relates to proposed new section 562C(3). We welcome provision for learners with learning difficulties but this again is quite weakly and, in my judgment, poorly worded. It says that,
The host authority must use best endeavours to secure that appropriate special educational provision is made for the detained person.
What precisely does the Minister mean by best endeavours and what does she expect the outcome of these best endeavours to be? Will statemented children with special needs and other children with special needs get the educational provision they so desperately need? Where and how will best endeavours be more clearly defined?
My third query concerns, in appropriately chronological fashion, proposed new section 562C(4)(c). This gives the power to the host authority to assess whether the special educational provision in a statement of a learner remains appropriate and to take amending steps as necessary. With no provision for updating the statement in this clause, how will the authority judge whether the existing statement is appropriate or accurate or, indeed, inaccurate? Does this not simply mean that local authorities will judge what is necessary according to what they can provide? There are real differences between authorities in terms of the number of statements they issue, the speed with which statements are dealt and the effectiveness of their provision. It seems the Bill will enshrine those vagaries in law in an unhelpful way. We need clear guarantees about how local authorities will behave and what will be expected of them. I am not sure that the Bill as currently worded does that.
My fourth question concerns proposed new section 562E(1). The SCYJ and the AOC have both highlighted the need for sharing information to ensure best provision for those in detention. With this in mind, why does the clause say,
Any person who has provided education or training for a detained person...may provide information relating to the detained person to(a) the home authority, or (b) the host authority.?
Surely, the Bill should say must rather than may. Is this not again rather weakly and ineffectively worded? The provider should be required to share information or the weaknesses of those LEAs who drag their feet will have a detrimental effect on the interests of learners. If there remains uncertainty about LEA involvement of the kind that I highlighted in our discussion about clause 47 and if these Government proposals are designed to firm up the provision to respond to those criticismsand I guess they would not have been tabled if that was not the intentionthen surely they need to be fit for purpose. I am not sure that they are as drafted.
You will be pleased to know that this is my final question, Mr. Chope; the Minister will certainly be pleased. It deals with proposed new subsections 562G (5) and (6). We welcome the requirement on a host authority to notify the home authority if it believes that a child in detention in its area has special needs, but could the host authority not be given the right to assess those needs, in line with existing, well established statementing practices? In raising these questions we want to ensure that the Governments proposals are sufficiently rigorous and robust to improve the legislation along the lines that most third parties and we, the Opposition, feel is necessary.

Sarah McCarthy-Fry: As drafted, clause 49 places a duty on the child or young persons home local authority to promote the fulfilment of that persons learning potential while in custody and on their release. Amendment 344 removes clause 49, and new clause 17 replaces it and inserts proposed new chapter 5A into the Education Act 1996. Through new section 562B, the chapter also places a duty on the child or young persons home local authority to promote the fulfilment of that persons learning potential while in custody and on their release.
The proposed new chapter also includes a power to regulate to modify provisions of the 1996 Act in how they apply to persons detained in juvenile custody. That is necessary where it is inappropriate for certain provisions of the 1996 Act to apply. For instance, the duty on parents to cause children of compulsory school age to receive full-time education should be disapplied while the child is in juvenile custody.
The new chapter makes further provision for persons detained in relevant youth accommodation and significantly strengthens the requirements relating to persons in juvenile custody with special educational needs. If, prior to detention, a person had a statement of special educational needs, proposed new section 562C now requires the host LEA to use its best endeavours. The hon. Member for South Holland and The Deepings asked about that phrase; it reflects the fact that it will not always be possible to supply the exact provision in the statement and it is the same as the duty on governing bodies of maintained schools. We will be issuing guidance on what it means.

John Hayes: That is interesting. It highlights the reason why I raised the matter in the first place. When a statement is issued, as the Under-Secretary knows, there is an obligation on the authority to meet the needs identified in that statement by providing adequate provision. Should it be impossible to make that provision within the local authoritys compass, the local authority must acquire additional resource from outside its boundaries. Why should that be different for people who are detained?

Sarah McCarthy-Fry: A statement may require a young person to attend a particular school or include provision for one day a week at an FE college. By virtue of the fact that these young people are detained in a custodial environment, it may not always be possible to deliver everything in the SEN statement, which is why we have the words best endeavours.
Proposed new section 562C also requires the authority maintaining the statement to keep a copy of it while the person is detained. New section 562F provides for the transfer of SEN statements and makes provision to ensure that the host authority is aware that an authority was maintaining a statement of special educational needs for a person prior to detention. An LEA maintaining a statement for a person who then enters juvenile custody must, on request by the host LEA, send a copy of the statement to the host authority. The provisions are designed to ensure that the relevant authority has a copy of the persons statement so that it can exercise the duties set out in the new chapter.
When the person is released, new requirements have been put on the host LEA to inform the home LEA of the persons release or, if different, the LEA that was responsible for maintaining the statement prior to the persons detention. The provisions will help to ensure that the appropriate authorities are aware that the person has been released so that, where necessary, special educational provision can be made for the person in the community.

John Hayes: The hon. Lady says that the LEAs will be required to make information available, but the wording that she proposes says that they may provide information, not that they must or are required to or should. How does she reconcile what she has just said with what it says in the amendment?

Sarah McCarthy-Fry: A statutory duty cannot be imposed without a means of enforcing it, so it would require criminal sanctions when a body is not a public body. I will undertake to write to the hon. Gentleman to clarify that.
New section 562A also facilitates the transfer of relevant educational information relating to the detained person in order to ensure that information relating to the persons prior education and particular needs can be transferred between appropriate persons so that education and training in juvenile custody can, as far as possible, meet the young persons needs and build on their prior learning.

Nick Gibb: Will the Minister confirm what that relevant educational information will include? Can she confirm that it will not include confidential notes of pastoral- type discussions between the former teacher and the young person?

Sarah McCarthy-Fry: I envisage that it will be educational information, but we will clarify that in guidance. We do not envisage that it will include anything other than educational information.
Specifically, the new clause enables those providing education or training for the young person prior to or during their detention in juvenile custody to share educational information about the person with the home and host LEA, and requires LEAs to comply with any requests for information as soon as practicable. It also requires Welsh Ministers to provide a copy of any relevant assessment reports on request by a home or host LEA. All the provisions will help to ensure that relevant information about the education of children and young people in custody can be transferred so that we can achieve the ends that I am sure we all desire.

John Hayes: In respect of new section 562G, there may well be a difference of approach between the home and the host authority. The approach that different authorities take to statementing and special educational needs varies immensely. Why should the host authority not be given a right to carry out an assessment of needs along the lines that I propose? I do not understand why that would not be a positive measure in the interests of the young person.

Sarah McCarthy-Fry: The practical answer is the length of time that young people spend in custody, which in many cases is limited. The time needed for an assessment would be better spent on using the information that we have and ensuring that they have some education while they are in custody, which is the point that was being made.

John Hayes: With respect, if the host authority has a responsibility for the young people and it is uncertain about the information that is passed to it about their needs and the provision necessary to cope with those needs, any responsible local authority would want to assess the young person concerned. It might not be a full re-statementing, but some kind of assessment, to ensure that it was living up to its statutory responsibilities in terms of providing adequate education or training. That would be fundamental. If I were running a host authority, I would certainly want that to happen, and I am sure that the Minister would too.

Sarah McCarthy-Fry: I do not disagree. I thought that the hon. Gentleman was referring to a statutory assessment in the statementing sense. We will certainly develop in our framework guidance something like the more informal assessment to which he refers.
I would like to move Government amendment 351, a technical drafting amendment consequent on amendment 344. I would also like to move Government amendment 352, which relates to the provisions in new clause 17 requiring local education authorities with relevant youth accommodation in their area to use their best endeavours to secure appropriate special educational provision for persons detained in juvenile custody. Specifically, amendment 352 amends section 207 of the Education Act 2002 to enable regulations to be made allowing the host LEA to recoup the cost of making appropriate special educational provision from the authority in whose area the person belongs. That will help to ensure that the host LEA can meet the special educational need of persons in custody and recover the costs over and above the core education costs in custody.
I would also like to move new clause 19

Christopher Chope: Order. I must interrupt the hon. Lady for a moment. Strictly speaking, she will have the opportunity to move the amendments later, formally. At the moment, she is just speaking to them.

Sarah McCarthy-Fry: I stand corrected, Mr. Chope.
New clause 19 will insert new section 312A into part 4 of the Education Act 1996. It suspends part 4 of the Act while a person is detained in relevant youth accommodation, meaning that an LEA maintaining a statement for a child does not have to continue doing so while the child is in juvenile custody. In effect, it means that the duty will be suspended during that time.
However, proposed new section 312A and the amendment to it also provide that a statement of special educational needs maintained before a childs detention must be revived and reviewed on their release. We believe that the amendment provides a significant improvement in policy for children with SEN in juvenile custody. Currently, children who have statements of special educational needs on entering custody have their statements stopped, and they are not necessarily picked up again on release.
We believe that it is essential that education and training in custody meet the needs of detained children and young people as far as is practical within the custodial environment, but we are also aware of the need to consider the practicalities of arranging and delivering highly specialised and discrete provision for persons in custody, the majority of whom spend only short periods there.

John Hayes: While the hon. Lady is speaking about the determination, and the balance between practicalities and what is desirable, will she say something about the interface with Connexions? It is critical that when a young person is released, there is good transmission of information between other authorities and Connexions so that the young persons circumstances can be made known and the options available to them explored through the Connexions service. She said nothing about that. Will she enlighten the Committee about her thinking on the subject?

Sarah McCarthy-Fry: That is one of the benefits of our bringing Connexions back under the wing of the local authority. They have all the tools at their disposal to achieve that.
I hope that Committee members will agree that it is not practical for all the duties imposed on local education authorities in the Education Acts to apply to the education and training of persons detained in relevant youth accommodation, but that our new clauses and related amendments provide a robust and practical solution to ensure that the special educational needs of children and young people in juvenile custody can be supported appropriately. We will also issue guidance to which LEAs must have regard when exercising their duties. The guidance will set out our expectations of how LEAs should support the special educational needs of children and young people in juvenile custody.

Christopher Chope: The question is that clause 49 stand part of the Bill. As many as are of that opinion, say Aye. [Hon. Members: Aye.] To the contrary, No. Perhaps we can do that again.

Nick Gibb: On a point of order, Mr. Chope. Has that not now happened, and can we not now move on to clause 50?

Christopher Chope: The hon. Gentleman is technically correct. The question is whether the Chair should make some allowance for the fact that there is obviously a lack of understanding, perhaps, on the Government Benches in relation to the material under discussion. My inclination is to give the Government a second chance, otherwise time might unnecessarily be taken up on the issue on Report when the Committee might have other priorities.

Question put and agreed to.

Clause 49 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Clause 50

Detention of child or young person: local education authority to be notified

Question proposed,That the clause stand part of the Bill.

Christopher Chope: With this it will be convenient to discuss Government new clause 18Detention of child or young person: local education authorities to be notified.

Sarah McCarthy-Fry: New clause 18 inserts new section 39A into the Crime and Disorder Act 1998 to require youth offending teams in England and Wales to notify a child or young persons home and host local education authority when they become aware that that person has been detained in or transferred or released from relevant youth accommodation. The new clause replaces clause 50, which is omitted by amendment 345, and extends that clauses requirements.
Clause 50 currently requires youth offending teams to notify the home LEA when they become aware that a child or young person has become subject to a detention order and has been detained in relevant youth accommodation. New clause 18 reinserts that requirement and extends it to require youth offending teams also to notify the host LEA in the area in which that person has been detained. The new clause also requires youth offending teams to notify LEAs as soon as they become aware that a person has been transferred between juvenile custodial establishments or is released from relevant youth accommodation.
The new clause will ensure that home and host LEAs always know when a child or young person moves into, within, and out of the juvenile custodial estate. It will also ensure that they know where the person is detained, and will help LEAs fulfil their new duties under new chapter 5A of the Education Act 1996. Furthermore, the new clause will help to ensure that suitable education is arranged for such children and young people while they are detained in juvenile custody, as well as upon their release.

John Hayes: The new clause ensures that youth offending teams share and exchange information with host, as well as home, authorities, which goes some way towards dealing with the concerns that we raised a few moments ago. As such, that is a step in the right direction, but I re-emphasise that we are most concerned that the right mechanism be put in place to exchange information. That would require a considerable investment in terms of databases, protocols and so on. Given the doubts that have already been expressed about whether the Connexions database is fit for the additional purposes for which it is now intended, I remain unconvinced that systems are in place to ensure that the issue is appropriately dealt with.

Question put and agreed to.

Clause 50 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Clause 51

Transport policy statements for persons of sixth form age: consultation

Annette Brooke: I beg to move amendment 125, in clause 51, page 32, line 43, at end add
( ) In section 509AB of the Education Act 1996 (c. 56) (further provision about transport policy statement) after subsection (7) insert
(8) In performing the duty to consult, an authority shall have regard to any guidance issued by the Secretary of State concerning the timing and manner of consultations under this section.
(9) An authority shall make available to persons or bodies it proposes to consult under this section such information as may be prescribed and is in its possession or control; and it shall do so in such form and manner, and at such time, as may be prescribed...

Christopher Chope: With this it will be convenient to discuss new clause 2Further provision about transport policy statements
(1) In section 509AB of the Education Act 1996 (c. 56) omit subsection (3)(d) and insert after subsection (7)
(8) In preparing a statement under that section a local education authority has a duty to provide affordable transport...

Annette Brooke: We now move on to transport following our rather tortuous discussions on education in youth offending institutions and so on. Amendment 125 would insert a requirement for consultation in the Bill. There is a very good reason for that. Most people would agree that local authority transport plans need to be madeafter proper consultation with colleges and other appropriate stakeholdersyet the Association of Colleges 2008 survey found that that did not happen in 40 per cent. of cases. That is quite staggering when considering the importance of transport in the Bills proposals. It is therefore very important to make sure that that really happens. There are a number of general points that I want to make and I will attach those to my comments on new clause 2.
I would like to make a number of probing points on whether a local authority should have a duty to provide affordable transport. The Bill proposes strengthening transport arrangements for 16 to 18-year-old students and I think that we all applaud that. When publishing their annual transport policy statement, local authorities will have to set out, in full, their thinking behind the statement and publish it in good time so that young people and parents can take account of it when making decisions about where to study. That is all very important, but at the moment there is no duty to provide affordable transport that takes into account the ability of young people to pay. Cost considerations are from the point of view of the local authority rather than the learner, and we have been emphasising today how important it is that the learner should be at the fore.
There are inconsistencies in the provision from different local authorities. Analysis of local authority transport policies in 2006-07 for students aged 16 to 19 shows that charges can be from between £60 to £550 per year. Free transport provision is available from some, but for the most part it is means-tested. The charge can cover anythingfrom the students contribution to student bus passes, places on local authority-provided buses, train passes, mileage allowance, or whatever the local authority has agreed to subsidise. While I am all in favour of local decision making, we have to determine that there is equitable provision for our young people across the country.
For the most part, local authorities will provide only free or subsidised transport to the nearest or nearest appropriate educational establishment. It is important to consider the young person who is travelling to undertake a course that is on offer at a particular institution only, or to a specialist college, which might be outside the home local authority boundary. The Government have encouraged colleges, schools and training providers to specialise and to offer more options, but sometimes young people need to travel further to access the right course. Choice in education is what we all wish for, but it can be expensive. However, if we have skill shortages, then we have to accept that travelling might be essential. It is important that young people have a genuine choice about their education and training, and that they should not face barriers relating to transport.
I have several specific questions that follow on from that. For example, colleges have been told by the Learning and Skills Council that they must no longer use the learner support funda fund to help disadvantaged students access coursesto fund transport. It would be very useful if the Minister clarified whether colleges can use that fund and whether the final responsibility to fund student transport should lie with local authorities.
There has to be concern about transport provision when colleges currently spend an average of £305,000 per year subsidising student travel. For example, Kingston Maurwood college in Dorset specialises in agriculture and many other very good courses. It manages to get a high proportion of students attending by having a very innovative transport policy that collects students from across the urban conurbation, as well serving the rural area. That issue is very unclear in terms of the future of colleges and needs to be addressed.
The Bill proposes that local authorities publish a transport policy statement covering travel arrangements for students aged 19 to 25 with a learning difficulty assessment under the Learning and Skills Act 2000. Does this mean that, on transport provision, students with learning difficulties who do not have a relevant assessment will be treated as adults, despite their additional needs? The purpose of the new clause is to put a firm responsibility on the local authority to ensure that there is genuine transport provision, so that all students can access the course that suits them bestwhile taking on board any disproportionality, as we discussed earlier today. I shall be interested to hear the Ministers comments on that.

John Hayes: I want to add some brief comments to this short but interesting debate. The hon. Lady raises some significant matters, and I want to emphasise their significance for rural areas. She spoke about the inconsistency of provision, and it would have the most devastating effect in those places where people will have to travel furthest to access the right training and education. In my constituency in Lincolnshire, for example, there is no FE college; the FE colleges that serve my constituents are in Boston, Stamford and Peterborough, so journeys are significant, take time and involve costs.
There are some important issues about guaranteeing adequate skills training and education for people in rural communities. Not all rural areas are immensely privileged, as some might believe. My constituency has an economic profile that, in a nutshell, could be described as one of high employment, low skills, relatively low educational attainment and real deprivation, so it is important that the Minister deal appropriately and clearly with the hon. Ladys points; otherwise, doubts will remain about the opportunities for young people and others in communities such as those that I represent.

Sarah McCarthy-Fry: The clause will give young people a new voice in the local transport arrangements for those of sixth-form age, and, by requiring local authorities to consult young people on the drawing up of their transport policy statements and ensuring that the statements can be amended in response to complaints, we will strengthen local accountability in the implementation of the current duty. The measures should ensure that local authorities are bound to give adequate consideration to the cost of transport and affordability when they develop their statement. Local authorities already consult young people and their parents on a range of childrens services, and we envisage that they will build on their existing good practice in consulting young people and their parents about transport provision.
Following the proposed transfer of responsibilities from the Learning and Skills Council, we intend that the Secretary of State issue guidance under section 509AB(5) of the Education Act 1996. We will use the guidance to set out our expectations of local authorities when consulting young people and examples of good practice. Given that we will put that in the guidance, we do not feel it necessary to include amendment 125, so, in the light of that assurance, we ask the hon. Lady to withdraw it.
On new clause 2, we share the hon. Ladys view that access to affordable transport is integral to helping young people access education and training. Current legislation strikes a balance between protecting the interests of young people everywhere and giving local authorities the flexibility to direct resources to local priorities. I am sure that she will agree that it is right that local authorities should have the discretion to determine how to target their funding to meet local needs. The increase in total Government grant for local services since 1997 will stand at 45 per cent. in real terms by 2010-11. Drawing on that funding, the current duty already requires local authorities to take into account the cost of transport in preparing their transport policy statements, and that should ensure that transport is affordable for young people.
The hon. Lady spoke about colleges and their requirements. While colleges might wish to provide discretionary financial support for individual learners facing particular hardship, we do not expect them to fund transport provision routinely. With regard to young people aged 19 to 24 with learning difficulties, we are strengthening our learning difficulty assessment guidance to include an explicit reference to consider a young persons wider needs, including transport. New section 508G in the Education Act 1996 will place a duty on local education authorities to make available in a transport policy statement information about the travel provision they have to put in place for young people aged 19 to 24.

Annette Brooke: It is exceedingly important to tease out where the responsibility will be for the college and the local education authority. Colleges have increasingly been put in a position in which they have had to top up transport because local authorities are not funding that. Equally, many in local authorities say that students have their education maintenance allowance, but I am not convinced that the EMA is necessarily intended for transport fees. Can we be clear that local authorities will have adequate funding?

Sarah McCarthy-Fry: I have made the point that the increase local authorities have had in their funding has enabled them to fulfil their transport duties. It is not necessarily intended that the EMA should be used to fund transport. We do not expect colleges to fund transport routinely. That is the responsibility of the local education authority. Given my remarks on amendment 125 and new clause 2, I hope that the hon. Lady will withdraw the amendment.

Annette Brooke: It is of course welcome that students and their parents are being consulted, but the fact that colleges are having to provide transport to overcome the shortcomings means that the consultation has to be wider and also go to the providers so that they can have their input in the local authority transport plan if the local authority is to have ultimate responsibility for this. I ask the Minister to take that on board. That will have to be clear in the guidance. I would also like to echo the points made on colleges in rural areas, as an important issue is that some young people in those areas cannot access courses. That will be an expensive provision, but if we truly mean it, it has to be backed by funds and resources. We cannot tell young people that they can have all these opportunities when in reality there could be a barrier. I will perhaps revisit those points later, but having made those comments, I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

Clause 51 ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Clause 52 ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Clause 53

Complaints about transport arrangements etc for persons of sixth form age

Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.

Christopher Chope: With this it will be convenient to discuss the following: new clause 3Complaints about transport arrangements
(1) After section 509AE of the Education Act 1996 (complaints about transport arrangements etc for persons of sixth form age in England) insert
509AF Complaints about transport arrangements etc for certain young adults
(1) A local education authority may revise a statement prepared under section 508F to change the arrangements specified under subsection (1) of that section if, as a result of a certain young adults transport complaint, they have come to consider the change necessary for the purpose mentioned in that subsection.
(2) A local education authority must revise a statement prepared under section 508F to change the arrangements specified under subsection (1) of that section if, as a result of a certain young adult transport complaint, the Secretary of State has directed them to do so.
(3) An authority that revises a statement under subsections (1) or (2) must publish the revised statement and a description of the revision as soon as practicable.
(4) The Secretary of State need not consider whether to exercise any power under sections 496 to 497A (powers to prevent unreasonable exercise of functions, etc) or subsection (2) of this section in response to a matter that is, or could have been, the subject of a certain young adult transport complaint made to him or her unless satisfied that
(a) the matter has been brought to the notice of the local education authority concerned, and
(b) the authority has had a reasonable opportunity to investigate the matter and respond.
(5) In this section certain young adult transport complaint means a complaint that is
(a) about a local education authoritys exercise of, or failure to exercise, a function under sections 508F to 509AD in relation to certain young adults,
(b) made by a person who is, or will be, a relevant young adult when the matter complained of has effect, or by a parent of such a person, and
(c) made by a certain young adult as defined by section 508F (8).
(6) For the purposes of sections 508G(8), 509AB(1) to (5), and 509AD, the revision of a statement under this section is to be treated as the preparation of a statement under section 508F.
(7) Where a local authority has published in a single document a statement prepared under section 508G and a statement prepared under 509AA, the requirement to publish a revised statement under subsection (3) is to be treated as a requirement to publish a version of the document that includes the revised statement..
(2) In section 496 of the Education Act 1996 (power of Secretary of State to prevent unreasonable exercise of functions), after subsection (4) (as inserted by section 206(1) of this Act) insert
(6) This section is subject to section 509AF (complaints about transport arrangements etc for certain young adults in England)..
(3) In section 497 of the Education Act 1996 (general default powers of Secretary of State), after subsection (6) insert
(7) This section is subject to section 509AF (complaints about transport arrangements etc for certain young adults in England)..
(4) In section 497A of the Education Act 1996 (power of Secretary of State to secure proper performance of LEAs functions), at end insert
(9) This section is subject to section 509AF (complaints about transport arrangements etc for certain young adults in England)...(Annette Brooke.)
New clause 4Power of the Secretary of State to direct a review of arrangements
(1) The Secretary of State may direct one or more local authorities to undertake a review of their transport policy statement.
(2) The provision which may be made by a direction includes provision for
(a) the timetable for the review and for the preparation and publication of a scheme,
(b) the procedures to be followed in carrying out the review,
(c) particular issues which the review and any scheme must address, and
(d) the implementation of any policy..

Annette Brooke: I shall be brief on these points. New clause 3 relates to complaints about transport arrangements, and the Minister has already alluded to the fact that there is a system within the Bill. We welcome the improved route of appeal for young people of sixth-form age and their parents on local authority transport arrangements. However, since local authorities have a duty to provide transport where necessary for learners with learning difficulties or disabilities up to the age of 25, we feel that those students should have the same right of redress. Therefore, I ask the Minister to give that serious consideration.
New clause 4 suggests that the Secretary of State may intervene. The Bill seeks to strengthen existing duties on local authorities, but colleges have genuine concerns that some local authorities have not been fulfilling their statutory duties to produce appropriate transport plans. As a backstop, the power to review any arrangements for transport would ensure that they are effectively planned and, most importantly, implemented, so that the whole scheme works to the advantage of our young people.

Sarah McCarthy-Fry: Clause 53 introduces new arrangements for sixth-form transport complaints. Local authorities will have a new power to amend their transport policy statements during the year, to take account of complaints or in response to direction from the Secretary of State. An updated statement will be published with a description of the change, ensuring that young people and their parents can always access up-to-date information about the transport and financial assessment arrangements available to them.
Sixth-form transport complaints will need to be considered locally, before being brought to the attention of the Secretary of State. Complaints addressed locally can be resolved more quickly and effectively, as that would take account of local context. Taken together, the measures will lead to more responsive sixth-form transport policies, as local authorities will have greater awareness of any problems that learners face in accessing provision and will have a power to amend their transport policy statements in response to complaints where necessary.
With regard to young people aged 19 to 24 with learning difficulties and disabilities, the changes in proposed new section 508G in clause 54 take us a step forward by ensuring that they will be given the information that they need about the transport provision available to them.
In relation to new clause 3, we agree that complaints are usually best addressed locally, as they can be resolved more quickly and effectively, but we need to reflect further on the points made by the hon. Member for Mid-Dorset and North Poole. I ask the hon. Lady not to press it to a vote, because I shall reflect further on that.
On new clause 4, I am sure that the hon. Lady would agree that we trust local authorities to manage and review their own transport arrangements for young people of sixth-form age. When there are complaints about transport arrangements, the changes made in the Bill will ensure that there are effective arrangements in place to resolve them. In cases where a local authority is acting unreasonably in how it is fulfilling its sixth-form transport duties or has failed to produce a transport policy statement, the Secretary of State already has the power to direct a local authority to review its policy or to produce a policy statement. Therefore, an additional power for the Secretary of State to direct a local authority to review its statement is unnecessary.
The measures in clause 53 have an important part to play in ensuring local accountability in the implementation of the transport duty. I hope that clause 53 can stand part of the Bill unamended.

Annette Brooke: I thank the Minister for her comments, particularly as far as new clause 3 is concerned. I look forward to the results of the further reflection on that point, because it seems as if something has been left out. I am relieved that there is already a power, which exists simply as a backstop, because I would be one of the first to say that we should trust local authorities. However, there appear to be variations between authorities and it is important that the power exists. Since I have been reassured on that point, I beg to ask leave to withdraw the two new clauses.

Christopher Chope: It is not necessary to do that, because they have not been formally moved.

Question put and agreed to.

Clause 53 ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Clause 54

Local education authorities in England: provision of transport etc for adult learners

Amendment made: 273, in clause 54, page 35, leave out lines 39 to 41.(Sarah McCarthy-Fry.)

This amendment is consequent on amendment 282.

Clause 54, as amended, ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Clauses 55 and 56 ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Schedule 2

LEA functions: minor and consequential amendments

Amendments made: 281, in schedule 2, page 152, line 30, leave out from (1) to end of line 31 and insert
after secondary education insert and, in the case of a local education authority in England, further education,.

This amendment is consequent on amendment 282.
Amendment 282, in schedule 2, page 152, line 34, leave out from persons to end of line and insert 
(a) who are over compulsory school age but under 19, or
(b) who are aged 19 or over but under 25 and are subject to learning difficulty assessment.
(4) For the purposes of this Act a person is subject to learning difficulty assessment if
(a) a learning difficulty assessment has been conducted in respect of the person, or
(b) arrangements for a learning difficulty assessment to be conducted in respect of the person have been made or are required to be made.
(5) In subsection (4), a learning difficulty assessment means an assessment under section 139A or 140 of the Learning and Skills Act 2000 (assessments relating to learning difficulties).
(6) For the purposes of subsection (1), persons who are subject to a detention order are to be regarded as part of the population of the area in which they are detained (and not any other area)..

New section 13(4) and (5) of the Education Act 1996 defines when persons are subject to a learning difficulty assessment for 1996 Act purposes. New section 13(6) identifies the area to whose population persons subject to a detention order are treated as belonging for section 13(1) purposes.
Amendment 348, in schedule 2, page 153, line 13, after functions insert
and their relevant training functions.

This amendment is consequential on clause 47 and ensures that section 13A of the Education Act 1996 applies to local education authorities in Wales when they exercise their new training functions under new section 18A(1)(b) of that Act.
Amendment 349, in schedule 2, page 153, line 16, leave out educational and insert learning.

This amendment is consequent on amendment 348.
Amendment 283, in schedule 2, page 153, leave out lines 19 to 21.

This amendment is consequent on amendment 282.
Amendment 350, in schedule 2, page 154, line 18, leave out from difficulty) to end of line 19 and insert
for 15A or 15B substitute 15ZA, 15A, 15B or 18A

This amendment clarifies that the definition of learning difficulty which applies to section 18A is that set out in new section 15ZA(7) and (8) of the Education Act 1996 (as inserted by clause 40).
Amendment 351, in schedule 2, page 154, line 24, at end insert
 After section 569 insert 
569A Regulations made by Welsh Ministers under Chapter 5A
(1) Any power of the Welsh Ministers to make regulations under Chapter 5A shall be exercised by statutory instrument.
(2) A statutory instrument containing any such regulations made by the Welsh Ministers shall be subject to annulment in pursuance of a resolution of the National Assembly for Wales.
(3) Any such regulations may make different provision for different cases, circumstances or areas and may contain such incidental, supplemental, saving or transitional provisions as the Welsh Ministers think fit.
In section 579(1) (general interpretation)
(a) in the definition of prescribed, after prescribed insert (except in Chapter 5A);
(b) in the definition of regulations, after regulations insert (except in Chapter 5A)..

This amendment is consequent on amendment 344 and reinserts new section 569A of the Education Act 1996.
Amendment 284, in schedule 2, page 154, leave out lines 25 to 27 and insert
In section 580 (index) insert the following entries at the appropriate places
relevant young adult (in sections 508F and 508G) section 508F(8);
relevant youth accommodation section 562(1A);
subject to a detention order section 562(1A);
subject to learning difficulty assessment section 13(4)..

This amendment is consequent on amendments 271 and 282.
Amendment 352, in schedule 2, page 154, line 27, at end insert

Education Act 2002 (c. 32)
 In section 207(2) of the Education Act 2002 (c. 32) (recoupment: adjustment between local education authorities), for primary education and secondary education) substitute 
(a) primary education;
(b) secondary education;
(c) education provided under section 562C of the Education Act 1996 (detention of persons with special educational needs: appropriate special educational provision).(Jim Knight.)

This amendment amends section 207 of the Education Act 2002 to enable regulations to make provision for a local education authority to recoup the cost of making the special educational provision required under new section 562C of the Education Act 1996 (inserted by NC17) from another authority.

Schedule 2, as amended, agreed to.

Clause 57

The Young Peoples Learning Agency for England

John Hayes: I beg to move amendment 239, in clause 57, page 37, line 26, leave out subsection (1) and insert
(1) There is to be a body which is part of the Skills Funding Agency known as the Young Person Learning Agency for England..

Christopher Chope: With this it will be convenient to discuss amendment 105, in clause 57, page 37, line 28, at end insert
(2A) The YPLA is not permitted to employ more than 500 people in total..

John Hayes: We are moving ahead with some speed now, but, none the less, it is important that we hesitate to say a word or two about amendment 239, which stands in my name and that of my hon. Friends.
The purpose of the amendment is to probe the Government on the character of the Young Peoples Learning Agency. By that I mean that it is the Oppositions view that the arrangements for the funding and management of skills should be as consistent and coherent as possible. To that end, the amendment removes the words:
there is to be a body corporate known as the Young Peoples Learning Agency for England
and replaces them with the words:
there is to be a body which is part of the Skills Funding Agency known as the Young Person Learning Agency for England.
The arguments for that change are set out more clearly in the debate that we are bound to have on clause 58. Essentially, we are attempting to ensure that the YPLA and the SFA work in a coherent and effective manner, and that the SFA provides an overall strategic vision while the YPLA provides the funding. The aim is to minimise the bureaucracy, the confusion, the convoluted arrangements and the incoherence that is likely to dog the Bill in its current form. We look forward to what the Minister has to say. As I have said, this is a probing amendment.

Nick Gibb: I want to speak to amendment 105, which is tabled in my name and that of my hon. Friends. Clause 57 creates the Young Peoples Learning Agency as part of the range of quangos replacing the Learning and Skills Council. As the National Union of Teachers so pithily put it:
We are concerned about the creation of a plethora of new agencies, with the Skills Funding Agency and the Young Peoples Learning Agency. We are in danger of exchanging the bureaucracy of the LSC for two new agencies.
And the rest. As my hon. Friend the Member for Surrey Heath (Michael Gove) said,
The Governments answer to more bureaucracy is another bureaucratic reorganisation. They are going to replace the Learning and Skills Council with the Skills Funding Agency...and a sub-quango, the National Apprenticeship Service, as well as with another quango, the Young Peoples Learning Agency.[Official Report, 23 February 2009; Vol. 488, c. 47.]
I fear that that reorganisation may lead only to greater bureaucratic overload.
My hon. Friend the Member for Havant (Mr. Willetts) described this as
a good example of a Government running out of steam and having to reorganise their own reforms...They inherited the Further Education Funding Council, which they abolished in 2001 in order to create the Learning and Skills Council. In 2008, the 47 local learning and skills councils were abolished and replaced by nine regional bodies and 150 local partnerships. In 2010, the Learning and Skills Council that this Government created is to be abolished and replaced by the Skills Funding Agency, the Young Peoples Learning Agency and the National Apprenticeship Service. This is an example of endless reorganisation.[Official Report, 23 February 2009; Vol. 488, c. 115.]
Furthermore, the YPLA and the SFA will, I understand, occupy the same premises as the LSC in Coventry. In fact, the very same people will occupy the very same premises in Coventry.
The LSC employs 3,300 staff. 1,000 of them will transfer to local authorities, 500 will transfer to the YPLA and 1,800 will transfer to the SFA. In an evidence session, the Under-Secretary of State for Innovation, Universities and Skills, the hon. Member for Birmingham, Erdington (Mr. Simon), in answer to a question put by my hon. Friend the Member for South Holland and The Deepings about the cost implications of this reorganisation, said:
The cost is already set out in the impact assessment; we have not memorised it. It is on the record.
Again in response to my hon. Friend, he went on to say:
This change is not a cost-saving exercise; that is not why we are making it. In the immediate term, it will be cost-neutral; in the long term, my expectation is that the new structures will be more efficient and cost-effective than the LSC.
The Minister for Schools and Learners said:
For claritys sake, the administrative cost of the new system, including staffing and on-costs, will be met...by the LSCs current staffing budget. We expect that to be revenue-neutral, but there will be some additional transitional costs. Savings will be made by operating from a smaller estate of office premises...the SFA will require fewer premises...Sharing will be facilitated by the fact that the SFA and YPLA head offices will be located together in Coventry.
When my hon. Friend asked again what the transitional costs would be, he was, alas, referred again to the impact assessment. As the right hon. Gentleman said in the same evidence session:
That is certainly set out in full in the impact assessment. We can obviously return to that during our debate.[Official Report, Apprenticeships, Skills, Children and Learning Public Bill Committee, 10 March 2009; c. 179-180, Q427, 428 and 429.]
Here we are, returning to it during our debate.
I have the impact assessment here. On page 33, under a heading of Transition costs, it states:
Although on-going costs of the new system will be revenue neutral there are likely to be transition costs relating to premises and pensions and, potentially, the transfer of the people from the LSC to their new employers. There will be assets that can be realised to offset these costs, such as the premises, though the current economic climate will make the calculations more complex. Work on calculating these is on-going and will proceed alongside the development of the designs for the Young Peoples Funding Agency and Skills Funding Agency.
The YPFA appears to be another quango that we are not aware of, unless there is a typo in the impact assessment, because I thought that it was called something else.

Jim Knight: The Young Peoples Learning Agency.

Nick Gibb: So we now have another agency, or it is a typo in the impact assessment. However, the key point about this impact assessment is that, regarding these costs:
Work on calculating these is on-going.
However, I would have thought that they were set out in full in the impact assessment, which both the Minister for Schools and Learners and the Under-Secretary of State for Innovation, Universities and Skills assured us about during the evidence sessions. Therefore, I hope that the Minister for Schools and Learners will be able either to explain his comments in the evidence sessions or perhaps he could write to members of the Committee, setting out what those Transition costs are, which we were assured have been calculated, so that they can be put on the record.
As for costs in the long run, the impact assessment says:
We expect ongoing costs of operating the new system to be revenue-neutral compared to the current system in the short term, with savings and efficiencies through a more integrated service at local authority level in the medium to long term.
Amendment 105 says:
The YPLA is not permitted to employ more than 500 people.
That is the number of LSC employees that will be transferred to the YPLA. Now, I have just read out the statement from the impact assessment that
We expect ongoing costs of operating the new system to be revenue-neutral in the short term.
Therefore, this prohibition should not be a problem for the Minister. Furthermore, the impact assessment says that it is expected that there will be
savings and efficiencies...in the medium to long term,
so 500 staff will be more than the YPLA is expected to employ
in the medium to long term.
It would help the Committee if the Minister could set out not only his estimate of the transition costs but an estimate of the declining costs that he expects over the medium term, as the efficiencies start to yield savings. It would help if that was put in terms of staff numbers as well as money.
The fear of most commentators on the Bill, including the NUT, the Association of Colleges and my hon. Friend, is that the reorganisation will create more bureaucracy, more bodies for colleges to deal with, more meetings, more consultations, more costs and more distractions. This is the Ministers opportunity to set out the facts and figures against which the implementation of the reforms can be judged in the short, medium and long term. If he cannot provide the numbers, we will know that the expectations set out in his evidence and in the impact assessment are nothing more than assertions based on hope.

David Laws: It is a pleasure to join the debate as we start the scrutiny of part 3. I do not want to detain the Committee for too long just as we have started to make some swift progress over recent clauses.
I will touch on amendment 105, which the hon. Member for Bognor Regis and Littlehampton has commented on. He raised many important issues that we aired during the evidence sessions. As the hon. Member for South Holland and The Deepings said, we will return to many of the issues raised by amendment 239 under later clauses. However, this is the obvious time at which to raise the concerns that the hon. Member for Bognor Regis and Littlehampton touched on in relation to amendment 105.
Amendment 105 initially has the appearance of a probing amendment, but it raises two fundamental issues about many proposals in the Bill, including the YPLA. First, are the Governments cost estimates realistic and serious? Secondly, what is the scale of the YPLAs role expected to be and will that change over time? According to the Government, the academies programme is growing rapidly. That will surely have implications for costs and staffing at the YPLA.
As the hon. Gentleman mentioned, we had an interesting series of exchanges with the Minister during the evidence session on whether there will be cost savings from the reorganisation, the abolition of the LSC and the establishment of the YPLA and other agencies. The Under-Secretary of State for Innovation, Universities and Skills admitted that there would not be net savings, but that there would be broad neutrality apart from the set-up costs. Whenever a Minister admits that there will be no cost savings, many people immediately suspect that the changes could end up costing much more than the Government suggest.
During one exchange in the evidence session, the Under-Secretary of State for Innovation, Universities and Skills indicated that at the least there was a lack of clarity over whether the existing savings that are assumed by the LSC and perhaps by the Department are embedded in the cost estimates that the Government are proposing in relation to the Bill. In other words, does the neutrality in the cost of these changes, including the YPLA, take into account the proposals and measures already in place to reduce the LSCs estate and staffing? Those have been significantly reduced over recent years. I understand that those changes are expected to continue over the next couple of years, not just in the rather unclear period after the existing spending review, but between now and the end of the existing spending review in 2011.

John Hayes: The hon. Gentlemans interesting remarks follow from the discussion of these matters in the evidence session. The implication is that the savings might be counted twice: once in the Learning and Skills Councils estimates, and again by Ministers, who want to emphasise just how reasonable the changes are. Surely the Minister would not be responsible for such double counting.

David Laws: I am reassured that not only has the hon. Gentleman spotted the point, but that he is clear that this Minister would not tolerate such double counting. I hope that the Minister will assure us in a moment that his partner Department is engaged in no such double counting. Both hon. Members to whom I have just referred will know that there are serious concerns about whether the Governments cost estimates are realistic, and whether the additional agencies that are being established with their regional presence will involve an additional cost that the Government are masking by trying to bank the savings that are already in place from scaling down the LSC and setting them off against the additional costs that will arise from the changes.
We know from the notes that the Government have circulated that they anticipate additional costs when, for example, the YPLA is set up and some of the responsibilities of academies are transferred from the Department to the YPLA. Indeed, in the notes on the transfer of academies under the section on finance and staff, the Government acknowledge that moving the finance team to separate locations will lead to loss of economies of scale. There is a further acknowledgment towards the end of the notes on this section that the regional presence of the YPLAfor example, in the oversight of academieswill involve an additional cost, which is estimated at £670,000 specifically for this narrow area of the YPLAs remit. I hope that the Minister will give us a cast-iron assurance that there is no double counting, and that the Governments estimate of net neutrality in the cost of the changes in the Bill does not already count the reductions in the number of staff and the size of the estate, which would have taken place from 2009 to 2011 anyway.
I also hope that the Minister will tell us whether he can provide reassurance about the future scale of the agency. Amendment 105 not only seeks to constrain the up-front costs of establishing the YPLA and the other machinery of Government changes, but it presumably also intends to cap the size of YPLAs staffing for the foreseeable future. Does that sit happily alongside the Governments future role for the YPLA, which we will discuss on some of the later clauses? In particular, is it consistent with the Governments plans to increase the scale of the academy programme, which will apparently involve more staffing for the YPLA, and presumably more than would have been the case if the functions had remained within the Department, for the reasons relating to the higher regional costs that are set out in the Governments assessment of the cost changes? Amendment 105 is useful, and I hope that it will flush out some interesting data and comments from the Minister.

Jim Knight: As we have heard, amendment 239 would make the Young Peoples Learning Agency part of the Skills Funding Agency, effectively recreating the Learning and Skills Council. Going down that road would confuse the distinct roles of the two bodies and dilute their focus and effectiveness. The focus of the Skills Funding Agency will be completely different from that of the YPLA, because it is an adult learning agency, and will have a clear brief in that regard. It will allocate funds to colleges and providers according to the purchasing decisions of employers and individuals through Train to Gain and skills accounts. Learning choices will reflect the specific circumstances and skills needed by the employer and individual concerned within a wider framework of national skills priorities. Crucially, collegesI have heard the concern expressed about bureaucracy and/or the confusion for collegeswill have a single account, which will reduce the conversations and commissioning that they currently have to undergo with the Learning and Skills Council.
That approach to adult skills does not fit with the arrangements needed for young people. Setting up the YPLA as part of the Skills Funding Agency would not deliver the transformation in services that we want for either group. Colleges will have a single conversation with local authorities, so what are at present multiple conversations with the Learning And Skills Council will be replaced by two conversations: one with the SFA and the other with local authorities. The hon. Member for Bognor Regis and Littlehampton worried that we were adding quangos. He will correct me if I am wrong, but his partys policy in respect of academies and expansion, with the example of the Swedish model, would involve the establishment of new schools with a new licensing authority, which would have to be set up. It sounds as if it would perform fairly similar functions to the academy functions performed by the YPLA. I do not really understand why he makes that criticism when it is his own party policy.
The YPLA will support local authorities in fulfilling their new duties to secure enough suitable learning places for all 16 to 19-year-olds in their area and ensure that the £7 billion budget that is being transferred is properly managed. It is an enabling body. It will provide funding for local authority provision of 16-to-19 learning, ensuring national budgetary control and making sure that plans are consistent with the concept of the 14-to-19 entitlement. It will consult on and provide a national commissioning framework. We are planning next month or soon after to publish the first framework for consultation that will help local authorities commission provision. It will provide data on participation, attainment and economic progression in local, sub-regional and regional areas, preventing the need for that to be done repeatedly at local level.
We need funding and administrative frameworks that are suitable for the circumstances of the two distinct sectors while ensuring co-ordination and progression between them, and setting out the YPLA and the Skills Funding Agency as separate organisations achieves that. It is fundamental to the fulfilment of what we set out in the Education and Skills Act 2008 about raising the participation age that we should have local authorities for ages 0 to 19, or up to 25 for those with learning difficulties, commissioning decisions supported by the YPLA, separate from the SFA as an Executive agency of the Department for Innovation, Universities and Skills.
Amendment 105 seeks to limit the number staff at the YPLA. I accept that at one level, it is a device to ask a series of important questions, and I will seek to address them as best I can. As a non-departmental public body carrying out these functions, it is appropriate that the YPLA has the flexibility to allocate administrative resources as its board determines appropriate. The pay, terms and conditions for that body will be accounted for to the Secretary of State and hence to Parliament. Its funding will be accounted for in the Departments expenditure plans. The YPLA, like other NDPBs, will be audited by the Comptroller and Auditor General.
We expect about 500 staff to transfer from the LSC to the YPLA to perform the LSC functions, as part of our strategy to ensure that the expertise in the LSC is retained for the benefit of 16-to-19 education and training. As the hon. Member for Yeovil said, we would also have to transfer some staff from the Department to perform the academies functions, and they are currently required to administer the number of open academies that we have at the moment. That number is set to increase dramatically, as we set out at the last departmental questions in the House. We have agreed more than 100 new academies in the past 18 months, many of which will open in September. We will seek to ensure that if the YPLA needs to grow staff, as an efficient organisation it does so on a basis proportionate to need. On those grounds, I do not think that it is appropriate to enshrine this or any other number of staff in primary legislation. That aspect of the functions of the YPLA is set to change and a cap on staff numbers would not allow the YPLA and its board the flexibility to manage its staffing in a responsive and appropriate manner.

John Hayes: When the estates of the National Apprenticeship Service, the YPLA and the SFA are combined, according to the Minister, the new estate is likely to be smaller. He spoke in the evidence session on 10 March about operating from a smaller estate, so collectively will those bodies employ fewer people than the LSC does now?

Jim Knight: Across the numbers of those transferring to the local authorities, the SFA and the YPLA, I do not expect a reduction in the head count. I expect it to be neutral. There may be some small variation on the margins, but we are currently agreeing with staff that there will be no compulsory redundancies, and attached to that is the notion that, consistent with cost neutrality, staff will transfer. As I said, we do not want to lose their expertise.
Mr. Stuartrose
Mr. Lawsrose

Jim Knight: I want to move on to some of the points that were raised in the initial debate, but I shall give way, first, to the hon. Member for Beverley and Holderness.

Graham Stuart: I am extremely grateful to the Minister. Would he confirm that the quantum of people employed by the SFA and the YPLA will be less than the number currently employed by the LSC?

Jim Knight: I would certainly think so, given that a number of staff will be transferring to local authorities.

David Laws: I am grateful to the Minister for his patience and for the comments that he has made about what he expects to be a neutral staffing position. Just so that there is no doubt about this, because such organisations sometimes tend to grow rapidly if left uncontrolled, how will he ensure that there is not a big increase, and is he confident that a year or so after the bodies have been established we will not find that staff numbers have gone up by 10 or 15 per cent.?

Jim Knight: I shall come on to that when I address the questions that have been raised about the impact assessment and my evidence.
To assist the Committee, in broad-brush terms, the LSC currently employs some 3,300 staff. We expect about 1,800 to transfer to the SFA and about 500 to transfer to the YPLA, leaving about 1,000 to transfer to local authorities. That is a substantial difference, to return to the question asked by the hon. Member for Beverley and Holderness.

Graham Stuart: I am grateful to the Minister for those figures. They cover the number of people who will be transferred to the new agencies but do not specifically cover any plan to hire additional people on top of that. For the elimination of doubt, I thought that I would provide him with an opportunity to put our minds at rest on the matter.

Jim Knight: I do not anticipate that the organisations will take on significant numbers of staff beyond those who transfer. Many of the details on staff transfers are being worked through and negotiated at present. There may be some staff who choose not to transfer, whose function may need to be replaced. I cannot put a straitjacket on the bodies. It is important that they perform their function, but it is equally important that they perform them within a restricted cost envelope.
On what is said in the impact assessment and what I said in evidence, it is fair to say that the impact assessment reflects in full where we were at the time that it was written. The picture is ever-changing as we refine costs and get closer to implementation. I commit myself to update the Committee in writing on where we are as the figures are refined, because it is important that it have more clarity about them. When the Bill completes its passage through the Commons and goes to the Lords, assuming that it does, there will be a refreshed impact assessment in which I would want to see much more detail in this regard. If I gave the impression in my evidence to the Committee that there was fuller information in the impact assessment than there is, I regret it.

David Laws: In that spirit of openness, will the Minister or the Department for Innovation, Universities and Skills undertake to provide the Committee with a note on the Government machinery costs of the new arrangement, compared with the costs of the old arrangement, not only for 2008-09 but projected to 2009-10, and 2010-11 to the end of the spending review? We can then compare what would have happened if the Learning and Skills Council had continued with the cost estimates under the new arrangements.

Jim Knight: I want to be as helpful as I can to the Committee, and I will set out something as close to what the hon. Gentleman asked for as I am able. The Committee will understand that since the impact assessment was published, we have been working on issues of staff pensions and the movement of staff to the three bodies, and there is still some negotiation going on. However, I can assure the Committee that the measure will be cost-neutral.
Within the comprehensive spending review period, there are limitations on the size of the budget to be spent for this, and every part of Government will have to make efficiency savings as per the announcements in the pre-Budget report. Furthermore, the Departments accounting rules and the Treasury rules on efficiency savings are being followed and scrutinised externally by the National Audit Office, which puts constraints on us to deliver our promise that the measure will be cost-neutral, as our fulfilment of that promise will be scrutinised. I can assure the Committee that there will be no double-counting, as described by the hon. Member for Yeovil. The measure will be genuinely revenue-neutral. I hope that on the basis of those assurancesto some extent promisesthe hon. Member for South Holland and The Deepings will not press the amendments.

Nick Gibb: I find that response unsatisfactory. The Under-Secretary of State for Innovation, Universities and Skills said:
The cost is already set out in the impact assessment; we have not memorised it. It is on the record[Official Report, Apprenticeships, Skills, Children and Learning Public Bill Committee, 10 March 2009; c. 179, Q427.],
and the Minister for Schools and Learners said:
That is certainly set out in full in the impact assessment. We can obviously return to that during our debate.[Official Report, Apprenticeships, Skills, Children and Learning Public Bill Committee, 10 March 2009; c. 180, Q429.]
The impact assessment is full of statements that the figures were too complicated to calculate, so the assumption is that the cost is nil. That is an unsatisfactory way to produce an impact assessment. When the House implemented arrangements for impact assessments, their purpose was not to become an obfuscation document that considers things too hard to calculate.
We are talking about replacing one quango with three, and the Committee deserves to know the best estimate of the costs arising from that transfer, the long-term or medium-term costs of staff transfer, as well as the transition costs. I do not believe that those transition costs do not reside somewhere in one of the two Departments. If they do, the Minister should promise today to write to members of the Committee so that we can return to the issue on Report. If the figures do not reside in either Department, something incompetent is going on in the administration of the transition. To transfer 3,300 people to the two bodies and to 150 local authorities and have no idea of the removal costs, the pension arrangements, or the compensation needed for moving people around the country is negligent Government administration. I hope that the Minister will provide us with those figures. He assured us that they existed when he gave evidence. That is the only way out for the Minister in dealing with the inaccurate evidence he gave in the fifth sitting of the Bill.

John Hayes: I am extremely grateful to my hon. Friend for putting the case on amendment 105 so clearly. He spoke in his final remarks like the accountant that he is. He wants detail. He wants things to be specific, and he is right to do so. He speaks for the people of Britain and expects taxpayers to be assured about these matters. We know that when this kind of Government reorganisation happensand they have happened primarily under this Governmentcosts escalate and things get out of control. They swell and mushroom. There is no better example of that than the Learning and Skills Council, which grew as it took on additional responsibilities and additional people, becoming ever more bureaucratic and finding new functions for itself as it interfered in the work of further education colleges and extended its scope and range. I suspect that the new organisations will do the same.
We can say one thing with certainty. The new system will not be streamlined. It is a not a slimmed-down new structure. Indeed, the Minister has finally acknowledged that it will not be any smaller. He said that there will be no compulsory redundancies, but what he probably meant to say is that there will be no redundancies at all, or at least no reduction in staff numbers. I suggest that staff numbers will grow. Although my hon. Friend spoke in firmI will not say luridterms about the matter, I acknowledge the Ministers humility in accepting that he may have got it wrong in the witness session. He said that he regretted giving the wrong impression. At least he is not like Edith Piaf: he does have regrets, and humility too. As Chesterton told us, humility is the mother of giants, for one sees much more from the valley than from the mountain top.
We now need the Minister, having regretted what he said originally, to regret what he has failed to say today and provide the Committee with more information at the earliest opportunity. That would be a fitting and appropriate way to resolve the differences between us. We do not like to disagree; we like to progress with equanimity and good will. I am sure that that good will might be re-established if we receive more detail. It is inconceivable that the detail does not exist in the Department. No responsible Minister would fail to model the costs. No responsible Government would fail to say to their officials, We want some estimate of what is likely to happen as a result of these significant changes. The figures must exist. The modelling must be available. It should be made openly available to members of the Committee.
At the witness session, I pressed the Minister hard for precisely those reasons. I am grateful for the support, both then and today, of the hon. Member for Yeovil and my hon. Friend, who as ever brought his remarkable diligence to these affairs. I hope that we can move on and that the Minister, even at this late stage, will commit to do as my hon. Friend asked and write to the Committee about amendment 105.
Amendment 239 is pertinent to this discussion. I mentioned at the outset that it was a probing amendment, but nevertheless, our mission in moving itit has been our mission throughout our considerations and will ever be thusis to try to make the changes as cost-effective as possible. We want a simpler, less complicated, more responsive, streamlined structure, but my goodness, that is not what the Bill gives us. It gives us ever more cost, ever more complication and an increased likelihood of contradiction and incoherence. It is not just more costly; it will not work, and that is even worse, because it is young peoples futures that we are dealing with, and with which the Minister is toying.
On the basis that the amendment was a probing amendment, I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment. I hope that the Minister will do better in future.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

Clause 57 ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Schedule 3

The Young Peoples Learning Agency for England

Jim Knight: I beg to move amendment 319, in schedule 3, page 155, leave out lines 3 to 12 and insert
(a) between 6 and 16 members appointed by the Secretary of State (the ordinary members), and
(b) the chief executive of the YPLA.
(2) The Secretary of State must appoint one of the ordinary members to chair the YPLA..

This amendment changes the requirements for the appointment of members of the YPLA other than the chief executive. The effect of the amendment is that these members will always be appointed by the Secretary of State.

Christopher Chope: With this it will be convenient to discuss the following: amendment 121, in schedule 3, page 155, line 5, at end insert
(d) at least one principal or governor of a further education college, and
(e) at least one principal or governor of a sixth form college..
Government amendments 320, 321, 330, 331 and 333.

Jim Knight: Amendment 319 changes the requirements for the appointment of members of the YPLA, other than the chief executive, with the effect that such members will always be appointed by the Secretary of State, and amendments 320 and 321 are consequential to that change. Amendments 330 and 331 provide that the chief executive will be an employee of the YPLA, and amendment 332 provides for the YPLA to determine the conditions of service of members of staff, other than the chief executive, with the Secretary of States approval. Those changes are largely technical in nature, will ensure a strong line of accountability for the role, tenure and responsibility of the board members and the chief executive, and will achieve greater consistency with similar provisions in the Bill relating to the Qualifications and Curriculum Development Agency.

David Laws: Did the Minister say that the amendments were just technical? Surely, some of them will have quite a serious impact.

Jim Knight: I said that they are largely technical in nature, but also that they ensure a strong line of accountability. They are important, otherwise we would not make them, but they are sufficiently technical to allow me to be brief.
Having said that, I shall say a little more about amendment 121, tabled by the hon. Gentleman. I think that I understand the intention behind the amendment, but provision has been made for the matter that it deals with elsewhere in the Bill. In the White Paper, we made the commitment that the YPLA will be a sector-led body, the governance of which will include representatives of key delivery partners. Paragraph 2(5) of schedule 3 states:
In appointing a person as a member, the Secretary of State or the YPLA must have regard to the desirability of appointing a person who has experience relevant to any of the YPLAs functions.
That would include representations from further education and sixth-form colleges, and other relevant organisations, such as local authorities and academies, in respect of the various functions that the YPLA will perform. As the board will have between five and 15 members, there is ample flexibility to ensure that key partners have a place at the table. However, our priority must be to ensure that we have the right calibre of board members, not to set quotas from particular sectors.

David Laws: Hopefully my question will enable me to shorten my speech later. Will the Minister clarify his comments in which he appeared to indicate that there would be a place on the board for individuals representing the different sectors, academies, colleges and so forth? How much of an undertaking was that? Towards the end of his comments, he appeared to veer away from that, towards an indication that it would simply be based on an assessment of ability, and that therefore there might not necessarily be representatives of each sector on the board.

Jim Knight: As ever, with board appointments, it is important to ensure that the board has the skills necessary to do its job. First and foremost, it is responsible for making appointments. Above and beyond the skills and competences required to be a board member, we have signalled, through paragraph 2(5), that we want to ensure that the board is broadly representative of the bodies relevant to the organisations functions. On that basis, I hope that the hon. Gentlemans speech will be short and that he will not press his amendment to a Division.

David Laws: I am grateful to the Minister for his comments on amendment 121. I shall not labour my point too heavily, because I hope that he and those involved in selecting the YPLA board will think it obvious that somebody from the sector highlighted in the amendment should be represented. However, I hope that, in his final comments, he will be a little warmer, cheerier and more positive about ensuring that further education and sixth-form colleges are represented on the board. Although I appreciate that it is important that individuals selected for the board have the ability to do the job, as the Minister put it, it is difficult to believe that it would not be possible to select somebody from those sectors with exactly those skills and abilities.
The Minister will know that the colleges sector is concerned to ensure that it is represented properly on this body, and that its interests and legitimate concerns are taken into account as the machinery of Government changes takes place. Although the Minister commented on the current drafting of the schedule regarding the composition of the board, the undertakings were rather general and did not offer the type of assurance that I am looking for. [Interruption.] I wonder whether that noise comes from the hon. Member for South Holland and The Deepings.
I turn from amendment 121 and the background bleeping to make some comments on Government amendment 319, if that is in order. I thought that the Minister said that the amendments in this group were somewhat technical. Perhaps he could confirm that. In my vocabulary, technical normally refers to fairly minor provisions that Opposition Members do not need to pay much attention to. However, the amendments in this group seem slightly more fundamental.
Unless I have misunderstood it, amendment 319 appears to represent a significant change from what is currently in schedule 3, lines 10 to 12 on page 155. It seems to give enhanced powers to the Secretary of State regarding the appointment of future members and chief executives of the board. There must be a reason why the Government have made that type of proposal, which appears to tighten the grip of the Secretary of State on the board of the YPLA. I am willing to hear the arguments for that tighter grip before making a judgment about whether it is justified, but it would be useful to hear something about why the Government have changed their mind since the original drafting of the Bill, and why they have decided to give themselves increased powers in respect of amendment 319 and the others in the group.

Jim Knight: I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his assiduous scrutiny. On his last point about the powers of the Secretary of State, the Government amendment will ensure that all members of the YPLA board, not just the first chief executive, are appointed by the Secretary of State. It is a necessary amendment required as a result of advice from the Cabinet Office that appointments should be made by the Secretary of State. That is so that the Office of the Commissioner for Public Appointments can regulate it. It also ensures consistency with the membership provisions for the QCDA elsewhere in the Bill, and essentially ensures proper regulation of the appointments through that route.

David Laws: Is the Minister saying that it would not be possible for the Government to implement what was originally in the schedule because of the rules and regulations? Without labouring the point, although this is described as technical, it is an important change. Under the original provisions in the Bill, future chief executives and ordinary members could potentially be selected by the YPLA on terms determined by it with the approval of the Secretary of State. Now that will not be possible. I seek clarification on that point.

Christopher Chope: Order. There is a Division in the House. It is obvious that the Committee wishes to carry on its deliberations. I propose that we suspend the sitting until 8 pm.

Sitting suspended.

On resuming

David Laws: I think I was bringing my comments on the amendment to a close and inviting the Minister to give further reassurance on the representation of further education colleges and sixth-form colleges on the YPLA board. I invited him to acknowledge that there will be more than enough people in that sector who have what he described as the ability to do the job. I also invited him to say more about why amendment 319 and the related amendments had to be tabled by the Government. Was it a requirement that the Bill team and the Minister stumbled upon or does it represent a more fundamental reassessment of how much of a vice-like grip the Minister and the Secretary of State want to exercise on the independence of the YPLA?

Jim Knight: I am grateful for that reminder of the invitations the hon. Gentleman issued prior to dinner. On membership, I cannot conceive that it would be possible for the board to do its job properly if it did not have proper representation from the FE sector, academies and the other sectors that it is concerned with. I hope that that is sufficient reassurance.
I have reminded myself of the reasons we decided to make the board members Secretary of State appointments in amendment 319 over the tort and bolognaise I enjoyed for dinner. This is the South-Holland-and-The-Deepings moment when I inform the Committee of my consumption. We made the change to get the right balance of autonomy and accountability. We want to ensure that the Secretary of State has confidence in the figures who will be accountable for £7 billion of public money. Crucially, only Secretary of State appointments are regulated by the Office of the Commissioner for Public Appointments. It is important that that regulation is in place to assure the public that the appointments are above board and beyond suspicion.

David Laws: Is the Minister saying that we cannot trust members of the YPLA board to appoint members and chief executives? That appears to be the implication. As it stands, is the Bill consistent with the way in which any other bodies that are overseen by his Department appoint their ordinary members and senior officers?

Jim Knight: I would trust the board in the same way that I would trust Ministers to make the right appointments in a way that is beyond suspicion. However, we established the Office of the Commissioner for Public Appointments to ensure that the process is beyond doubt for the public. It is right that the appointments to a body that is responsible for £7 billion of public money have that level of public scrutiny. On that basis, I hope that the hon. Gentleman will not press amendment 121.

David Laws: I am grateful to the Minister for both replies. I am very pleased with his response on amendment 121. I will chalk that up as a triumph and an important concession that I hope will be reflected in future boards.
I am not as convinced by the explanation of the Government amendments. Rather than being technical amendments, it seems that they would put back into the hands of Ministers the power to determine all the board members for the Young Peoples Learning Agency rather than allowing the YPLA itself to select those individuals in the future. There seems to have been something of a change of heart and mind by Ministers on the matter, which as far as I can establish goes beyond what is absolutely necessary.

Nick Gibb: Does the hon. Gentleman not consider that there comes a point at which Ministers who are accountable to the public for delivering a quality of service need to have the powers to deliver what they promised in their manifesto?

David Laws: I agree with the hon. Gentleman, but there is no reason why there could not be provision under schedule 3 for there to be intervention when the individuals were acting in an improper way or were not consistent with the Governments policy. Indeed, under schedule 3 the terms of the appointments have to meet with the approval of the Secretary of State. I regret that the Government have gone back on the issue, but I have registered the Ministers arguments and we will mull over the matter and consider whether we want to return to it.

Amendment 319 agreed to.

Amendments made: 320, in schedule 3, page 155, line 13, leave out second a and insert an ordinary.

The effect of this amendment is that the requirement in paragraph 2(5) of Schedule 3 will apply only to the members of the YPLA other than the chief executive.
321, in schedule 3, page 155, line 13, leave out or the YPLA.(Jim Knight.)

This amendment is consequential on amendment 319.

Jim Knight: I beg to move amendment 322, in schedule 3, page 155, line 17, leave out members of the YPLA and insert chair and other ordinary members.

Christopher Chope: With this it will be convenient to discuss Government amendments 323, 324, 325, 326.

Jim Knight: The amendments make changes to the governance of the YPLA. Amendments 322 to 325 restrict the application of paragraph 3 of schedule 3, which is concerned with tenure, to members of the YPLA other than the chief executive. Amendment 326 has the effect that the chief executive will be an ex officio member of the YPLA board.

Nick Gibb: Will the Minister explain what the tenure would be of ordinary members?

Jim Knight: That is a pertinent question. Obviously, the measures do not apply to the chief executive who will be an ex officio member of the board, but for all other board members the tenure will normally be three years.

Amendment 322 agreed to.

Amendments made: 323, in schedule 3, page 155, line 20, leave out A member of the YPLA and insert The chair and other ordinary members.

See Members explanatory statement for amendment 322.
324, in schedule 3, page 155, line 22, leave out a member of the YPLA and insert an ordinary member.

See Members explanatory statement for amendment 322.
325, in schedule 3, page 155, line 27, leave out a member of the YPLA and insert the chair or another ordinary member.

See Members explanatory statement for amendment 322.
326, in schedule 3, page 155, line 28, at end insert
(5) If the chair ceases to be an ordinary member, the person also ceases to be the chair..(Jim Knight.)

This amendment provides for a member of the YPLA who is also its chair to cease to be the chair on ceasing to be a member.

Jim Knight: I beg to move amendment 327, in schedule 3, page 155, line 31, leave out its and insert the ordinary.

This amendment, with amendments 328 and 329, restricts the application of paragraph 4 of Schedule 3 to members of the YPLA other than the chief executive. The chief executives pay and pension will be determined in accordance with conditions of service set under paragraph 5(A1): see amendment 30.

Christopher Chope: With this it will be convenient to discuss Government amendments 328, 329, 332

Jim Knight: The amendments make changes to the governance of the YPLA. Amendments 327 to 329 restrict the application of paragraph 4 of schedule 3, which is concerned with remuneration, to members of the YPLA other than the chief executive. Amendment 332 provides for the YPLA to determine the conditions of service of members of staff, other than the chief executive, with the Secretary of States approval.

Nick Gibb: Will the Minister put on the record whether he will disclose in the annual report the remuneration details of the chief executive and the key members of the board of the YPLA, so that we have complete transparency in such matters for the public?

Jim Knight: That degree of transparency is certainly in the public interest. The normal accountancy rules, which have that sort of disclosure in them, will apply. The chief executives pay and pensions will be determined in accordance with conditions of service set out in proposed new paragraph 5(A1), as shown in amendment 330.

Nick Gibb: Will those details be available for the public to scrutinise?

Jim Knight: As a public body, I would expect there to be that level of scrutiny. If different, I shall write to the Committee and let it know.

Amendment 327 agreed to.

Amendments made: 328, in schedule 3, page 155, line 34, leave out member of the YPLA and insert ordinary member.

See Members explanatory statement for amendment 327.
329, in schedule 3, page 155, line 35, leave out a member of the YPLA and insert an ordinary member.

See Members explanatory statement for amendment 327.
330, in schedule 3, page 155, line 40, at end insert
(A1) The chief executive is to be appointed by the Secretary of State, on conditions of service determined by the Secretary of State..

The effect of this amendment is that the chief executive of the YPLA will be a member of its staff and will always be appointed by the Secretary of State, on conditions of service determined by the Secretary of State.
331, in schedule 3, page 155, line 41, after appoint insert other members of.

This amendment is consequent on amendment 330.
332, in schedule 3, page 156, line 1, leave out sub-paragraph (2) and insert
(2) The conditions of service of the other members of the YPLAs staff are to be determined by the YPLA with the approval of the Secretary of State..

This amendment provides for the YPLA to determine the conditions of service of members of staff other than the chief executive, with the Secretary of States approval.
333, in schedule 3, page 157, line 37, leave out the chief executive or any of the ordinary members and insert
any of the other ordinary members or the chief executive.(Jim Knight.)

This amendment is consequent on amendment 319.

Jim Knight: I beg to move amendment 305, in schedule 3, page 160, line 23, leave out this or any other and insert any.

See Members explanatory statement for amendment 291.

Christopher Chope: With this it will be convenient to discuss the following: Government amendments 291, 306, 292, 307.

Jim Knight: The amendments are minor, technical drafting changes, which ensure consistency in all references to the Bill in conjunction with other Acts.

Amendment 305 agreed to.

Schedule 3, as amended, agreed to.

Clause 58

Provision of financial resources

John Hayes: I beg to move amendment 240, in clause 58, page 38, line 5, at beginning insert
Under guidance from the Chief Executive of the Skills Funding Agency,.

Christopher Chope: With this it will be convenient to discuss the following: amendment 256, in clause 58, page 38, leave out lines 6 to 12 and insert
(a) local education authorities for the purposes of their functions in relation to the education or training of persons
(i) who are compulsory school age but under 19, or
(ii) who are aged 19 or over but under 25 and are subject to learning difficulty assessment;
(b) persons providing or proposing to provide education or training for such persons in pursuance of arrangements made by local education authorities in the discharge of those functions..
Government amendment 308.
Amendment 241, in clause 58, page 38, line 11, leave out subsection (b).
Government amendment 309.
Amendment 122, in clause 58, page 38, line 12, leave out such education and training and insert subsection (a) (i).
Amendment 242, in clause 58, page 38, line 15, at beginning insert
Under guidance from the Chief Executive of the Skills Funding Agency,.
Amendment 243, in clause 58, page 38, line 25, at beginning insert
Under guidance from the Chief Executive of the Skills Funding Agency,.
Government amendment 310.
Amendment 244, in clause 58, page 39, line 1, at beginning insert
Under guidance from the Chief Executive of the Skills Funding Agency,.
Amendment 245, in clause 58, page 39, line 7, at beginning insert
Under guidance from the Chief Executive of the Skills Funding Agency,.
Government amendment 311.

John Hayes: I rise conscious of the fact that we are anxious to make progress. We do not want to miss our supper by going on too long. We have had dinner, as the Minister reminded us, but there is time to squeeze in at least one more occasion to wine and dine. With that ambition in mind, I shall try to speak to the amendments as a whole.
The amendments are designed to ensure that the YPLA operates under guidance
from the Chief Executive of the Skills Funding Agency.
The amendments are probing, to ascertain why the YPLA funding duties for 16 to 19 education cannot be overseen by the Skills Funding Agency, a body that it is anticipated will deal with 19-plus skills-based education, further education and apprenticeships.
Many witnesses in the evidence sessions of the Committee pointed out that the transition was likely to be long, arduous and costly, and that the resulting structure might not be fit for purpose in any case. The amendment proposes a more streamlined structure, in which the SFA oversees the work of the YPLA, delivering a more coherent line of responsibility and accountability, and easier translation of funding goals. The weakness of the proposed system is that it has three delivery agencies where just one would do. The amendment seeks to do the best that it can to tie the agencies together in terms of their performance and accountability, in an attempt to minimise the impact of the proposed organisational changes and, instead, concentrate on what is good about the existing system.
As Elizabeth Reid of the Specialist Schools and Academies Trust highlighted when questioned about the potential dissolution of the YPLA:
From a number of points of view, I might not be too relaxed about that. The whole history of planning and providing for the education of 16 to 19-year-olds is quite vexed. Over the last three or four decades, there have been many difficulties.[Official Report, Apprenticeships, Skills, Children and Learning Public Bill Committee, 3 March 2009; c. 48, Q123.]
The amendment is designed to minimise those difficulties and ensure that the system runs smoothly for providers, employers and learners. From what they said in Committee, all of them would have sympathy with such an amendment.
Daniel Moynihan from the Harris Federation said:
A national body that is accountable to the DCSFa single unit such as the YPLAwill be a high-quality, high-profile body that provides strong accountability, without variation. We are more likely to get that strong accountability and rigour from an organisation such as the YPLA than we are from myriad local authorities.[Official Report, Apprenticeships, Skills, Children and Learning Public Bill Committee, 3 March 2009; c. 49, Q127.]
John Lucas of the British Chamber of Commerce said:
We are very uncomfortable with the state of play of the reform, particularly with the dissolution of the Learning and Skills Council and the introduction of the Skills Funding Agency. We believe that the changes are too bureaucratic and do not address the underlying issues and problems of the education system.[Official Report, Apprenticeships, Skills, Children and Learning Public Bill Committee, 3 March 2009; c. 5, Q1.]
As I have said, these are probing amendments designed to test the Government both on why they have not proposed a more efficient and streamlined structure and whether, given the force of argument in this Committee and the opportunity to consider these matters more carefully after a good dinner, they might be mindedeven at the 11th hourto change their mind, listen to the experts and do the right thing.

David Laws: Not having any intention of returning to supper having had dinner and having an amendment down in this section, I think that I should speak to it even though the Minister is looking slightly distressed at my intervention, perhaps anticipating a second dinner or even a supper. Amendment 256 seeks to clarify how the YPLA will discharge its duties in the future and who will be in the driving seat when it comes to commissioning. On page 26 of the explanatory notes to the Bill, it says that Clause 40, with which we have already dealt,
 imposes a new duty on local education authorities to secure that all young people in their area who are over compulsory school age but under 19, and persons aged 19 and over but under 25 for whom a learning difficulty assessment has been carried out.
The explanatory notes go on to say:
The Government propose to create a small non departmental body, the Young Peoples Learning Agency for England (the YPLA)
which we have just been discussing
sponsored by DCSF and reporting to the Secretary of State, whose core purpose is to provide the funding to enable local education authorities to fulfil this duty.
In other words, it is fairly clear from the explanatory notes, that the principal responsibility lies with the local authority. The local authority is the one that is being funded and that will be in the driving seat when it comes to commissioning. However, when we look at clause 58, we can see that it is the YPLA that is mentioned first as having to
secure the provision of financial resources.
In the introductory part of the clause, it appears that the YPLA will be in the driving seat in relation to commissioning and providing. Subsection (b) refers to local education authorities which will also receive financial resources for what is described as their functions in relation to education or training. What amendment 256 seeks to do is put local authorities back in the driving seat in relation to commissioning and receipt of funding in the way in which the Government appear to anticipate in their explanatory notes.

John Hayes: Could we be clear about the hon. Gentlemans principal concern? Is it one of duplication or one of confusion? Is he suggesting that because of the way in which the Bill is drafted, both local authorities and this new agency would have overlapping responsibilities? Or is he suggesting that the Bill is clumsily worded and it does not do what the explanatory notes say that it should?

David Laws: Until I hear from the Minister, I am afraid to say that it is both. I am not sure whether the Bill is deliberately confusing, whether there is a risk of duplication or whether the intention in the Bill as drafted is not rather different from what is in the explanatory notes, because the Bill appears to give more commissioning power and responsibility, in relation to funding, to the YPLA to commission directly, rather than engaging through the locally elected authority, which according to the explanatory notes would be in the driving seat.
Amendment 256 is designed to turn around clause 58 so that it comes into line with the intentions stated in the explanatory notes and to make clear what the distinct roles of the YPLA as a funder and commissioner will be in comparison with local authorities. Is the intention, as stated in the Bill, that the YPLA will have quite a lot of power to commission directly and outside the local authority control or agreement, or will this body have as one of its prime responsibilities or its prime responsibility the funding of local authorities so that they can discharge those duties? At the moment, the Bill is rather confusing on that point. It would be helpful for the Minister to end that confusion and to clarify the circumstances in which, for example, the YPLA might ignore the wishes of the local authority in discharging its functions under clause 58.

Jim Knight: I shall deal first with amendments 240 and 242 to 245. Clause 58 ensures that the financial resources that local authorities need to deliver on their new duties under the Bill are transferred to them from the YPLA. That is the beginning of an explanation, but I will go on at greater length for the benefit of the hon. Member for Yeovil a bit later. These amendments would make all the YPLAs duties and powers with respect to securing financial resources subject to guidance from the chief executive of the Skills Funding Agency. Together with amendment 239 to clause 57, which we have already discussed, they would mean that the YPLA was set up as part of the SFA rather than as a separate non-departmental public body.
Although I have once before set out the position to the hon. Member for South Holland and The Deepings in respect of the barmy proposition that the YPLA be part of the SFA, I will give it another go. As he knows, the adult skills world is demand-led; the learners decisions are very much what is provided for. The SFA will deliver through Train to Gain and a number of other things that have been set out and will be discussed when we reach that part. The situation for FE colleges, which I know he is concerned about, is very different from the planned, commissioned provision, which is what happens on the 16-to-19 side of things. They are very different and the accountabilities for them should be very different.
If we are to make sense of the Education and Skills Act 2008 and the policy to raise the participation age to 17 and then 18 in 2015, it is important that the accountability for nought to 19 should rest with local authorities. That is the fundamental reason why we need separate agencies. We need an agency for adults. We then need accountability locally through local authorities for nought-to-19 education and provision up to 25 for people with learning difficulties.
Once we have made that decision, we need to be able to deal with the problem that FE colleges in particular would have, which is that without some sub-regional and regional arrangements that can be brokered if there are problems, they would have lots of conversations with lots of different local authorities. A precondition to accepting the institutional infrastructure that we have designed and which is reflected in the Bill is agreeing with raising the participation age. I know that in Committee on the Education and Skills Bill, the hon. Gentlemans party voted against that. If he opposes RPA, it is perfectly credible for him to oppose this proposal. If he supports RPA, I cannot see how he would not see that local authorities should have responsibility for 16-to-19 commissioning and therefore that there is a need for an agency to be able to broker and facilitate the commissioning, alongside passing the funding from Government to local authorities, according to the decisions on commissioning that local authorities make.

John Hayes: The key issue is where we think most of the extra young people who stay on will be educated. My assumptionperhaps it is not the Ministersis that most of the extra people who stay on, who do not currently, will be educated in the FE sector. A very substantial number will, at least. Given that we think that the FE sector should be largely independent and self-regulated, with a slim, streamlined funding agency providing it with the funds to respond to need, it is not surprising that we do not support the establishment of the new agency.

Jim Knight: We discussed last year where the growth might be, but FE will be responsible for a significant part of that provision. A certain amount will take place in sixth forms, and, elsewhere in the Bill, we legislate to give sixth form colleges their own legal status, which they largely welcome. They will then have more of a relationship with the local authority, but other training providers will grow significantly, too. Apprenticeships will grow significantly, so the process will involve not simply FE colleges. The most important thing for the hon. Gentleman and others to understand is that we need seamless provision from 0 to 19 and to end the break at 16, Reinventing the Learning and Skills Council would, in institutional terms, keep the break at 16 and provide a substantial obstacle to increasing participation successfullyeven if the hon. Gentleman disagrees with us about the enforcement of participation.

John Hayes: Following the logic of the Ministers assertions, I must say that he is right that other, private training providers will absorb some of the growth, and right about apprenticeships, but neither they nor private further education training providersthose providing what FE colleges doshould come within the orbit of a young persons learning agency. They would be better off under a skills funding agency. That seems reasonable and logical; and why LEAs have to be involved at all is beyond me.

Jim Knight: I know that the hon. Gentleman does not like local education authorities, even though his party is democratically responsible for most of them, but we should put Connexions and the information, advice and guidance duties on local authorities for 0 to 19-year-olds, and the commissioning responsibilities in the hands of local authorities, too. That is the progressive move that will make the process work, and it was a voice that we heard form the Local Government Association, the Association of Directors of Childrens Services and others, when we took evidence from witnesses.
It is also worth pointing out to the hon. Gentleman that participation in school sixth forms is rising faster than in FE colleges, so it would be difficult for us to design something that anticipated things as he sees them; we must design something with flexibility. There is no single body that will deliver to both young people and adults the intensity of support and advice that our future prosperity demands, and we should create that autonomous, non-departmental public body.
Amendment 256 would prevent the YPLA from funding providers directly and independently of local authorities when it is necessary to do so, as the hon. Member for Yeovil set out. For the overwhelming majority of young people, local authorities will commission places in the way that we have discussed at length todaythrough the sub-regional groupings. Clauses 58 and 63 are intended to deal with a number of exceptions where the YPLA may have to play a different role. It is necessary to create those powers to enable the YPLA to pass funding to local authorities to support their own commissioning plans, and there is no doubt that they will be in charge of the vast majority of that commissioning. They will be in the driving seat, which I think was the phrase that the hon. Gentleman used, but they will need support from the YPLA to ensure consistency and value for money. The YPLA will fund the commissioning decisions of local authorities, and they will also have a subsidiary role in the YPLA to ensure coherence and budgetary control across the country.
The powers in clause 58(1)(a) and clause 58(3) are necessary in respect of examples that we will discuss later, where there is a need to commission from some providersthe Royal Ballet School, for examplethat are genuinely national institutions that need a national funding arrangement rather than something that would make sense in terms of a single conversation with a local authority, because so few of the learners would come from that local authority area.

David Laws: Surely amendment 256, tabled in my name and that of my colleagues, does not in any way impede what the Minister is describing. All it does is to make clear what he has already made clear, which is that the local authority is the overwhelmingly dominant provider. But proposed clause 58(1)(b) makes it clear that other persons or agencies can be used to provide the education or training necessary, provided that it is in pursuance of arrangements made by local authorities in the discharge of those functions. There is no reason why local authorities should not be involved in that process, surely.

Jim Knight: Of course, local authorities will be involved. It is just that there are circumstances in which certain providersthe case has been made to ushave a relationship with so many local authorities and are not dependent on any individual local authority that having that single relationship does not necessarily make sense. The YPLA will also be required to undertake similar functions using these powers, where, under the intervention strategy agreed with the Secretary of State under clause 70, it has evidence that a local authority is failing or is likely to fail in its duties under clause 40 to commission suitable education or training. There may also be circumstances and instances where sub-regional groups of local authorities are not ready to take on their commissioning role and where the YPLA needs to act on their behalf. So there are three different sorts of circumstances where these powers may be needed.

David Laws: I am grateful to the Minister for being typically generous in giving way, but can he describe any circumstances in which the YPLA would want directly to commission against the wishes of the local authority? That is, after all, all we are calling for in amendment 256.

Jim Knight: In the case of intervention, where there is evidence that the local authority is failing or is likely to fail in its duties, there may be circumstances where a local authority would disagree with the commissioning decisions that are in the best interests of learners. There might be issues in respect of those with particular needs, where there is a disagreement about what is reasonable or disproportionate expenditure. We explored some of those matters earlier in debate.

David Laws: Will the Minister give way?

Jim Knight: I will, but we need to make some progress.

David Laws: I am sorry to labour this point, but it is quite important. I am happy to leave aside the cases where a local authority clearly is not capable of carrying out its duties, because that is not what we are talking about. We are talking about circumstances where the YPLA might, even with a local authority operating perfectly properly, intervene to become the direct commissioner against the wishes of the local authority. I am not convinced yet that the Minister has explained why that would be necessary, unless the local authority was a failing authority.

Jim Knight: The hon. Gentleman has asked us to leave aside the very scenario where it would be necessary to use these powers. In the vast majority of cases the normal practice will be for the YPLA to fund the local authoritys commissioning decision. I want to be really clear about that. However, we want to hold these powers for the YPLA in those unusual circumstances where it is necessary for them to intervene. I can only see the YPLA acting against the wishes of the local authority if it was failing to deliver its duties under clause 40.
Amendment 122 would restrict the YPLAs duty to provide funding in respect of 16 to 19 learners and learners with learning difficulties. The extension of the duty on local authorities to be responsible for specific learners over 19 reflects the Departments recognition that some learners with learning difficulties who are subject to a section 139A assessment of their needs may require more time to complete their education, so would remain in lower-level provision for longer.
I understand that Committee members may be concerned that some specialist colleges, such as residential colleges, that serve learners from a number of local authority areas may need separately to contract with those local authorities. I reassure the Committee that that will not be so. The overriding principle is that each provider should have one commissioning dialogue for the provision being commissioned by local authorities and that dialogue will be with the lead local authority, decided by the sub-regional group.
Amendment 241 would go even further and remove the YPLAs duty to provide financial resources to local authorities for any education and training provision that they secure under section 15ZA and would result in an even unfunded burden falling on local authorities.

Sitting suspended for Divisions in the House.

On resuming

Jim Knight: Before we were interrupted by the bell, I think I was about to say that I hoped that I had reassured hon. Members that none of their amendments to clause 58 was necessary, and I hope that they will not press them to a vote. Government amendments 308 to 311 are consequential to amendments made to part 2 about young offenders.

David Laws: I still think that the Ministers explanation is rather odd and at variance with the early part of clause 58. He has described the circumstances in which the YPLA would fund provisions directly, which seem, in his view, to be only when the local authority is completely failing to discharge its responsibilities. The impression given by the first few lines of clause 58, particularly lines 5 to 12, is rather different. However, I accept what he said about the intentions in this part of the Bill, so we will save any further amendments to this section until we have had an opportunity to reflect on what he said.

Nick Gibb: As my hon. Friend the Member for South Holland and The Deepings said when he moved amendment 240, these are probing amendments. Having listened to the Minister, I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment. Perhaps we can return to it later in the proceedings.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

Amendments made: 308, in clause 58, page 38, line 10, at end insert
(aa) persons providing or proposing to provide suitable education to children subject to youth detention;.

This amendment places a duty on the YPLA to fund the provision of education to children who are subject to youth detention. Subject to youth detention is defined in clause 77, as a result of amendment 318.
Amendment 309, in clause 58, page 38, line 12, leave out such education or training and insert
education or training within paragraph (a) or (aa).

This amendment is consequent on amendment 308.
Amendment 310, in clause 58, page 38, line 30, after (1)(a) insert or (aa).

This amendment is consequent on amendment 308 and confers power on the YPLA to fund persons providing goods or services in connection with education provided to children subject to youth detention.
Amendment 311, in clause 58, page 39, line 12, after (1) insert (a).(Jim Knight.)

This amendment is consequent on amendment 308.

Clause 58, as amended, ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Clause 59

Financial resources: conditions

Amendment made: 274, in clause 59, page 40, line 3, leave out a learning difficulty assessment and insert
an assessment under section 139A or 140 of the Learning and Skills Act 2000 (c. 21) (assessments relating to learning difficulties).(Jim Knight.)

This amendment is consequent on amendment 276.

Clause 59, as amended, ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Clause 60

Performance assessments

John Hayes: I beg to move amendment 135, in clause 60, page 40, line 16, at end add
(3) The YPLA must consult with the following when adopting or developing schemes as set out in subsection (1)
(a) the Chief Executive of Skills Funding,
(b) a local education authority in England, and
(c) Ofsted..
The Association of Colleges is concerned that further education colleges will have to respond to at least two funding bodies: their local authority and the SFA. It is vital that those agencies and the new Young Peoples Learning Agency have a default position of sharing information to ensure that colleges do not spend even more time dealing with bureaucratic burdens and can concentrate their efforts on teaching students.
Both the YPLA, under clause 60, and the SFA, under clause 99, can carry out performance assessments on colleges and use those assessments when making funding decisions. It is particularly important that the assessments are carried out in a co-ordinated and coherent way in order to avoid duplication of the agencies work with that of any other funding or inspection bodies. Given how clearly the evidence in the Committee sessions highlighted that the proposed system is likely to be loaded with red tape and bureaucracy, surely the Minister will see the wisdom of the amendment.
Neither the nature of the financial relationship between local councils and colleges nor audit arrangements are included in the legislation. We would welcome clarification of whether local authorities, the YPLA and the SFA will each be able to audit colleges and whether the audits will be co-ordinated. Will they be arranged chronologically? Will they overlap? What kind of shared endeavour will occur in that regard? With those few words, I will be delighted to hear what the Minister has to say.

Jim Knight: We certainly agree that in many circumstances, the YPLA will want to consult as proposed in the amendment and draw on existing practice. A number of bodies are already tasked with assessing the performance of providers, of which Ofsted is the major one, and local authorities are already scrutinised by the Audit Commission, among others.
In other areas, the YPLA might need to develop additional systems to enable it to do its job. It will need to performance manage directly when commissioning directly, and, in the unusual circumstances that we have been discussing, it can take provider quality into account when assessing a local authoritys commissioning plans. It will be able to adopt and develop schemes for performance assessment to support a local authoritys performance management functions. It will, of course, work with the SFA to develop a common assessment framework to provide consistency for providers. By and large, of course, the performance management of colleges will be carried out by the SFA and that of schools and sixth form colleges by the local authority.
I have set out some examples of when the YPLA will want an assessment framework, and I have said already that a national commissioning framework will set out the common framework, for example in respect of a framework for excellence. We are looking to simplify audit arrangements to ensure that no extra burdens are put in place and to avoid duplication. Obviously, we expect the YPLA to consult the most appropriate bodies, and we have levers to ensure that the consultation will take place. On the basis of those assurances, I hope that the hon. Member for South Holland and The Deepings will feel free to withdraw his amendment.

John Hayes: The Governments argument in favour of this convoluted structure and rather clumsy organisational arrangement is that it reflects clumsy thinking. There is no use saying, We think clumsily about such matters, so we have had to construct a system to match our own failures and faults. The arrangement is evidence that, rather than reducing the number of bodies with which colleges have to deal, the Government are likely to retain or grow the existing number. In 2005, Andrew Foster, whose report I have mentioned once or twice, identified 17 bodies with which colleges are obliged to deal in respect of inspection, funding, monitoring, planning, and improvement or standard setting. Will the Minister tell us which of those bodies further education colleges no longer have to deal with, or will not have to deal with, as a result of the Bill? What extra bodies will they have to deal with? According to my calculations, FE colleges will have to deal with at least 17, possibly 18, bodies, as a result of this legislation, which directly contradicts Andrew Fosters call for a slimming down of the structure, a reduction in bureaucracy and a clearing up of what seems to me to be a bit of a mess.

Jim Knight: I have heard the hon. Gentlemans Andrew Foster speech several times. Will he respond to any of my points? I know that he is a legendary multi-tasker, and I am sure that he was capable, in the middle of the conversation that he was having with the hon. Member for Bognor Regis and Littlehampton, of listening to every word that I said. Will he respond to anything that I did say?

John Hayes: It is not my job to respond to my own amendment, as the Minister will understand. I have tabled the amendment, and it is his job to respond to that. I made it fairly clear that the amendment was tabled after consultation with the Association of Colleges. He made it clear in his response that he thought that in some circumstances the YPLA would still have to audit or inspect colleges. He also said that he anticipated that that would not be a routine matter; he claimed that my assertion that there would be a confusion of auditing and inspecting was unfounded. None the less, the Government have done nothing to strip down the multitude of bodies that inhibit the performance of further education, because they force the professionals running our colleges to spend an immense amount of time and energy dealing with red tape and paperwork. That is not my analysis. It is the analysis of Andrew Foster, who was commissioned by the Government. He said that the Government should do something, and the Bill is the sorry result.
The Minister spoke about the Royal Ballet school, which Billy Elliot attended, but I am more interested in T.S. Eliot, who asked where was the wisdom lost in information. If that eminent gentleman had had the misfortune to serve on the Committee, he might have said, Where is the wisdom lost in the bureaucracy faced by the Committee in scrutinising and ultimately passing the Bill on to the next stage?
I shall withdraw the amendment for the sake of brevity, but I am not satisfied with the Governments positionand neither, I suspect, will colleges up and down the country. I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

Clause 60 ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Clause 61

Means tests

David Laws: I beg to move amendment 142, in clause 61, page 40, line 22, at end add
but it may not make bonus payments under section 58(4)(a) which relate to attendance, academic performance or completion of course work..
The amendment is designed as a helpful probing amendment. I shall speak briefly. It invites the Government to withdraw any powers there might for the Young Peoples Learning Agency to make bonus payments under the existing educational maintenance allowance or any other financial provision that the Government see fit to introduce. If the Government were to accept the amendment, they would be able to free up the £100 million or so that is used each year to make bonus payments. That money could be used instead to close the long-standing gap between funding those youngsters aged 16 and 17 who go to college and those who attend school.
I look forward to hearing what the Minister has to say; I hope that he will accept the amendment.

Jim Knight: We heard a good explanation of what the amendment would do. Bonus payments are an important element of the educational maintenance allowance scheme, which provides a financial incentive to help young people from lower income households to participate in post-16 educational training. EMA has been shown to have a significant and positive impact on participation and attainment, particularly among the more disadvantaged groups. That is something of which we are proud.
When EMA pilots were introduced, participation in full-time education increased significantly for 16 and 17-year-olds, following a decade of little or no increase. Those increases have been sustained since the national roll-out. More recent analysis found that EMA increased attainment at levels 2 and 3 by about 2 per cent. for male learners and about 2.5 per cent. for female learners.
EMA is a something-for-something scheme. To receive EMA, a young person must sign a contract with their learning provider, setting out what is expected of them if they are to earn weekly payments and bonuses. In September 2008, we amended the criteria for EMA weekly payments and bonuses to include not only attendance but behaviour, achievement and effort.
Learning providers have welcomed that change. It strengthens the something-for-something aspect of the scheme. By providing a further incentive for learners to fulfil the expected standards of behaviour set out by the learning provider, and getting them to put effort into the course, we are encouraging attainment and progression among young people from less well-off backgrounds.
Mr. Lawsrose

Jim Knight: I therefore believe that bonuses are an important, integral part of EMA. I shall indulge the hon. Gentleman and give way yet again.

David Laws: The Minister is being his usual generous self. I did not hear anything in his speech indicating that the Government have measured the effectiveness of the EMA bonuses, rather than the underlying EMA, which is what the amendment is about.

Jim Knight: We believe that the bonus system is working well; as I said, it provides a significant improvement in participation and attainment. We do not have independent quantitative evidence about the impact of bonuses. We will consider it in our review of financial support for young people that we announced in the White Paper on social mobility, which was published at the beginning of the year. Anecdotal evidence from providers, particularly those offering the entry to employment programmes or provision targeted at harder-to-help groups has stressed their importance for attention and for maintaining motivation of learning. That is why, at this stage, I would not want to remove the possibility of continuing with bonuses.

David Laws: In contrast to the impression that the Minister gave at the start of his answer, it sounds as if the EMA bonuses are rather evidence-free parts of the financial support system for students. Bonuses also lead to a great degree of bitterness among students who do not receive an EMA; they find it difficult to understand the fairness of other young people on their courses being rewarded and taking it for granted. After all, such bonuses are paid on top of payments that are already being made for the primary purpose of supporting young people from lower-income backgrounds to remain in education and training.
I am disappointed at the Ministers refusal to accept the amendment, particularly as the Government do not seem to have a strategy for closing the gap in funding for young people in schools and colleges. The Secretary of States predecessor made that commitment a long time ago, but it is yet to be delivered. I fear that I will not persuade the Minister, so I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

Clause 61 ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Clause 62 ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Clause 63

Securing provision of education and training

John Hayes: I beg to move amendment 236, in clause 63, page 41, line 5, leave out subsections (a) and (b) and insert
only where no alternative provision is available from external providers..

Christopher Chope: With this it will be convenient to discuss the following: Government amendment 312.
Amendment 237, in clause 64, page 41, line 16, leave out subsections (2) to (5) and insert
(2) The YPLA may withdraw funding from the provider and secure the provision of financial resources to other persons providing or proposing to provide suitable education or training to persons in sections 58(a)(i) and 58(a)(ii)..

John Hayes: The clause that the amendment seeks to alter enables the YPLA to secure provision of education in particular circumstances; it may, for instance, secure provision while sub-regional groups of LEAs are being established. The amendment would constrain the YPLA, because we believe that it should be a funding body rather than one that plans and secures provision. We want to encourage providers to meet need, so the amendment essentially means that provision would be organised by the YPLA, but only where there are no external or underperforming providers. The amendment therefore seeks to limit the extension of the YPLAs competence.
Amendment 237 attempts to remove intervention rights from the YPLA and ensure that it redirects funding to other providers instead. Its objective is not to inhibit provision, but to direct from where it emanates. We are interested to hear the Ministers perception of what the limits on the YPLAs powers will be in that regard.

Jim Knight: Government amendment 312 is consequent to the new local authority duties in relation to young offenders and will extend the YPLAs powers to enable it to secure the provision of education and training for children who are subject to youth detention.
On amendment 236, clause 63 provides a critical element of support to the system. In those, it is hoped, rare circumstances, which the hon. Member for Yeovil discussed earlier, where a local authority is failing, or likely to fail, to fulfil its duty to commission suitable education or training, or where sub-regional groups of local authorities are not ready to take on that role, the YPLA will have the power to ensure that the education and training required to secure the outcomes for our young people is effectively commissioned. As the YPLA will not itself be a training provider, all providers will be external to it, so the amendment is problematic in that it would create a situation where the YPLA could never intervene in that way.
On amendment 237, intervention in the context of the YPLAs powers under clause 64 means stepping in and supporting a local authority to develop a commissioning plan, ideally before any financial resources are transferred. In essence, such support would be a back-office function and would not affect the business planning of a local post-16 provider. Our whole direction here is to give as much decision making and accountability as possible to local areas, supported by the YPLA.
The effect of amendment 237 would be that when the YPLA felt the need to intervene in that way, it would only be able to withdraw funding from one provider and direct it to a different one, which seems a clumsy response. When a local authority is failing in its duty to secure suitable education or training opportunities for young people, that will become apparent through its commissioning plan for the coming year and not through the performance of an individual provider. Through clause 64, we want to ensure that we retain the ability for a suitable education place for our young people to be commissioned, and that the YPLA can then ensure that the local authority tackles the capability issues in its commissioning process. A further safeguard is that the YPLA must consult the Secretary of State on the use of the provisions, so there should be no hiding place for local authorities. Local authorities have the duty and they have accountability to their local communities. They will also have the resources through the YPLA, but we do not want to see the YPLA, which will be a national body, overriding that accountability. Yes, it will support it; yes, it will challenge it; but no, it will not replace it altogether. I hope that, by reason of all that clarity, the hon. Gentleman will not press the amendments.

John Hayes: That sounds fair enough to me. I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

Amendment made: 312, in clause 63, page 41, line 9, at end insert
(3) The YPLA may secure the provision of suitable education for children subject to youth detention..(Jim Knight.)

This amendment gives the YPLA the power to secure the provision of education for children subject to youth detention.

Clause63, as amended, ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Clause 64

Intervention for purpose of securing provision of education and training

Jim Knight: I beg to move amendment 313, in clause 64, page 41, line 12, after perform insert  (a).

This amendment, with amendment 314, amends clause 64 to confer power on the YPLA to intervene if an LEA has failed or is likely to fail to perform its duties in respect of people subject to youth detention.

Christopher Chope: With this it will be convenient to discuss the following: Government amendment 314.
Amendment 393, in clause 64, page 41, line 16, leave out YPLA may and insert
Secretary of State, upon receipt of a recommendation from the YPLA, may.
Government amendment 315.
Amendment 394, in clause 64, page 41, line 21, leave out subsection (4).
Amendment 395, in clause 64, page 41, line 24, leave out YPLA and insert Secretary of State.
Amendment 120, in clause 64, page 41, line 24, at end add
(6) A further education college may inform YPLA if it is satisfied that a local education authority is failing, or is likely to fail, to perform its duty under section 15ZA of the Education Act 1996..

Jim Knight: It is essential that every young person is able to access high quality learning. That means that we must provide for the event that a local authority is not able to carry out its commissioning functions, and ensure that young people and providers in the local authority area are not disadvantaged because of that. Government amendments 313 to 315 support new local authority duties in relation to young offenders by giving the YPLA the power to intervene if a local authority has failed, or is likely to fail, to perform its duties in respect of people subject to youth detention. Without the amendments, the YPLA would be powerless to ensure that those young people receive the education that they deserve under the circumstances.
Amendments 393 to 395 would give the Secretary of State rather than the YPLA the necessary powers to give directions to a local authority, when the YPLA was satisfied that the local authority was failing or likely to fail in its duty under new section 15ZA and the amendments to it. However, the YPLA is far better positioned to give those directions. The YPLA has a remit to ensure that funding achieves the best balance of provision to meet young peoples needs and that overall budgetary control is maintained. Clause 64 gives the YPLA supporting power to ensure that it is able to fulfil that remit. Fundamentally, the YPLA will work with local authorities, and it will have a strong regional presence and that understanding of what is happening on the ground. As we have discussed, the Secretary of State will appoint the members of the board and ensure that there is good accountability for the decisions that the YPLA makes, and therefore rather than having to pass these issues up to the Secretary of State I hope that the Committee agrees that it is more appropriate for the YPLA to make the decisions.
The intention behind amendment 120 is to ensure that colleges have a right of appeal to the YPLA if they are unhappy with the funding or commissioning decision taken by the local authority. I have already mentioned the provisions in clause 70 under which the YPLA must prepare and consult with appropriate persons on a policy statement that sets out the details of its policy on its powers of intervention. That consultation will give stakeholders such as the Local Government Association, local authorities, the Association of Colleges, individual providers, and other parties that have a stake in the success of local authority commissioning processes, the opportunity to ensure that the intervention policy is suitable and that the triggers for intervention are appropriate. The effect of the amendment would be to enshrine in legislation the ability of further education colleges in particular to inform the YPLA when they are concerned that a local authority is failing.
Although we understand the potential concerns of colleges in particular, this amendment does not provide sufficient latitude for others with a similar interest to have that same degree of statutory influence. Instead, we believe that the combination of clause 64 and clause 70 will mean that the intervention process ensures that there are the right triggers and levers for all concerned, not just colleges. We are working with those partners to develop a draft of such a strategy and I will be happy to share that with the Committee at the earliest possible opportunity.
I hope that, having given all those fine assurances and indeed continuing with the theme of clarity that I spoke about when we were discussing the last amendment, hon. Members will agree that their amendments are unnecessary.

David Laws: I am grateful to the Minister for anticipating a lot of what I might have said about amendments 393 to 395, amendment 120 and, if you will allow me, Mr. Chope, because it covers similar territory, amendment 396, although obviously we will be formally debating that amendment later under clause 69.
I want to turn to amendment 120 to start with. This is the amendment that would give colleges a right of appeal to the YPLA if they are unhappy with a funding or commissioning decision taken by a local authority, which shows that even the Liberal Democrats can accept that occasionally local authorities will not be perfect.
I think that the Minister was saying two slightly different things. They are not necessarily inconsistent, but they are two slightly different reasons why he does not want to accept amendment 120. I think that he was saying, first, that amendment 120 would give appeal rights to one particular group that would not be available to others. However, I think that he was also saying that he felt that elsewhere within the legislation there would be mechanisms for dealing with local authority failure. I was not quite clear, though, whether he feels that the existing legislation formalises those rights of appeal for bodies such as colleges, or if they really rely upon the YPLA itself to identify from other information circumstances in which a local authority would be failing.
Presumably, there is nothing to stop a college writing to or notifying the YPLA about concerns that it may have. However, perhaps I could ask the Minister to clarify whether he really thinks that the existing legislation gives appeal rights that are clear enough and I also want to ask him if he would be willing to accept amendment 120 if it was more even-handed in relation to other bodies that might also want to exercise such appeal rights.
The other amendmentsamendments 393 to 395, and the later amendment on clause 69, which is amendment 396all seek to strike what we feel is a better balance between the authority of the YPLA and that of the local authority, which would essentially place a duty on the YPLA to seek a democratic mandate from the Secretary of State before exercising powers over a democratically elected council.
The Minister, perhaps understandably, expressed some concerns about whether all of these matters that a local authority was not delivering on would appropriately be passed up to the Secretary of State or the Department. However, I draw to his attention the fact that, in clause 64(4), there is already a requirement for the YPLA to:
consult the Secretary of State before exercising the power conferred by this section.
Therefore, given that there will be a duty on the YPLA to consult, will the Minister consider whether it is appropriate for the YPLA, particularly as it is an unproven organisation, to use the quite considerable powers that it will be granted by this Bill to exercise powers over a democratically elected tier of government, in circumstances where the Government are supposed to be championing what senior members of the Government have often talked about as a new localism? Here, however, we seem to be giving really quite considerable powers to an agency, without there being any proper democratic oversight or any other democratic check.

Jim Knight: In respect of the hon. Gentlemans last point, it is important that the Secretary of State is consulted, in order to deal with the point that he has just made that these are democratic organisations and that the Department should be properly aware of what the YPLA might do. As we see elsewhere, if we want an agency to be listened to, it needs to have some teethsome sticks in the background alongside its carrots of funding, which it will be distributing liberally in accordance with local authority commissioning plans. That is, in essence, why the balance is right. I always reflect on what the Committee has debated to make sure that hon. Members have not pointed out a weakness contained in the Bill.
We are also working to develop a complaint and issue resolution process in relation to 16-to-19 provision and we are working with stakeholders, including the AOC, in the discussion and development of that complaints procedure. There are a number of broad principles that have been agreed with them about how that might work. It is important that that process is in place for the reasons that have been set out, beyond the fundamental principle, as set out in the clauses. It is important that there is an intervention policy which has been properly and formally consulted onit is set out in clause 70and that everybody understands how those processes will operate so that if interventions are then used, they follow a proper process and, if they are not followed, they can then be challenged in the courts.
I hope, on that basis, that the hon. Gentleman will be happy.

David Laws: I beg leave to ask leave to withdraw the amendments.

Christopher Chope: You do not have to do that, because we have a Government amendment before us, which is amendment 313.

Amendment 313 agreed to.

Amendments made: 314, in clause 64, page 41, line 14, leave out (the section 15ZA duty) and insert , or
(b) its duty under section 18A(1) of that Act (duty to secure provision of enough suitable education and training for persons subject to youth detention)..

See Members explanatory statement for amendment 313.
Amendment 315, in clause 64, page 41, line 17, leave out section 15ZA duty and insert duty in question.(Jim Knight.)

This amendment is consequent on amendment 314.

Clause 64, as amended, ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Clauses 65 to 68 ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Ordered, That further consideration of the Bill be now adjourned.(Ms Butler.)

Adjourned till Thursday 19 March at Nine oclock.